Italians playing Bach’s “dry,” “scholarly,” and “outdated” music, very few 18th-century Latins would have imagined it. Germans themselves would mostly have seen it as a waste of time. Because, you know, Bach was far from being the musical superstar he is today. Time has done its work, fortunately, and what seemed antithetical is now celebrated as a shared heritage in which kinship ties are found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is nothing new in knowing that Bach, from the beginning of his career, showed a lot of curiosity and interest in the musical style coming from the peninsula further south. We know he had fun transcribing and arranging scores by Vivaldi and the Marcello brothers (among others). The “Concerto for Four Violins” by the Red Priest (Vivaldi) is actually one of the best examples of this attraction, Bach having transformed it into an exciting Concerto for… four harpsichords.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If at the time the “sharing” was rather one-sided, as the centuries passed, the German Cantor became the musical god we know and today even Italian hedonists recognise his incomparable genius. So, why not place the two worlds side by side (once again, we will say, since this kind of juxtaposition is not new)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n