- Review of Bach Boston Birthday 325

 MARCH 23, 2010

All-day Homage to Bach in Back Bay on Renowned Richards, Fowkes Organ

by Christopher Greenleaf

In celebration of the 325th anniversary of the birth of Thüringen’s most famous son, two musically active Back Bay churches threw open their doors all day on March 20, this first fully spring-like weekend of the year. First Lutheran, whose celebrated Richards, Fowkes organ, op. X, will mark its first decade this December, sponsored a solid and skillfully programmed octet of half-hour organ recitals. The concerts drew good audiences; many faces from the morning were still to be spotted at the early-evening double bars. Entry was free to all. Parents with strollers, a few score-toting devotees, Bach-aware preppies, and people who don’t usually go to  hear classical music — the changing crowd in the pews were a pleasingly mixed lot.

 - review of my concert at the Midwinter Conclave, Sarasota, FL, January 17, 2010

 - A review by Christopher Greenleaf on the Musical Intelligencer

 - A review by Harvard Professor Christoph Wolff

 Exsultemus Tranports To Hamburg

by Christoph Wolff

The Exsultemus Ensemble opened its 2009-2010 Concert Season with an attractive  program devoted to 17^th and 18^th-century sacred music from the city of Hamburg. (Three other traditional German musical centers – Darmstadt, Leipzig, and Dresden – will be featured later this season.) The program focused on the three composers who defined Hamburg’s musical life in their respective periods: Matthias Weckmann and Christoph Bernhard, the two star pupils of Heinrich Schütz, from the mid-17^th century and Georg Philipp Telemann, the dominant figure in the 18^th century. The juxtaposition of two distinct style periods proved to be most illuminating.

 - Review of my concert at the Boston Early Music Festival

  JUNE 15, 2009

Fine Organ Playing, Lecture, at BEMF’s Organ Festival

by Larry Phillips

The fourth biennial Organ Mini-Festival of the 2009 Boston Early Music Festival occurred last Friday, June 12, 2009, under the direction of William Porter. This year it was entitled “Consummate Counterpoint and Graceful Galanteries, The Organ at the hands (and feet) of the Bachs.”

 - Program Notes for a Recital in Lancaster, PA on September 18, 2009

 Toccata Adagio and Fugue in C Major BWV 564 

Trio Sonata No. 3 in D Minor BWV 527

Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D Minor BWV 903 transcribed for organ by Max Reger (1873-1916)

J. S. Bach (1685-1750)

Intermission

Sonata in D Minor Op.65 No. 6

Felix Mendelssohn Barholdy (1809-1847)

Studies for Pedal Piano), Op. 56

No. 4 in A flat Major

No. 5 in B Minor

No. 6 in B Major

Robert Schumann (1810-1856)

Trumpet Toccata (2007)

Balint Karosi (1979-)

 - An audience member's email about my Methuen recital

 An audience member wrote me a short thank you after my recital at Methuen on September 2 2009. She did not know that the encore piece was sung by my mother.

 - Bad review of my concert in Richmond. Compare it with Christoph Wolff's review of the Weckmann

Nov. 6, Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Richmond

Bálint Karosi, the Hungarian-born, Boston-based winner of the 2008 Johann Sebastian Bach Competition for organists, came to call with an unusual program, “The Evolution of the North-German Chorale Variation,” for an unusual instrument, the baroque-style Taylor & Boody organ installed in 1983 at Bethlehem Lutheran Church.

Monday, March 16, 2009 - Review of Hungarian Recital

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 - Review of my 2007 Nashville Organ Recital by organist Rolland Puckett

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