daily festival recaps
- Music@Menlo Wraps Up Spectacular Sixth Season (August 08)
- Voices of Our Time (August 07)
- "without whom we would be mute" (August 06)
- Just Another Day at Music@Menlo (August 05)
- Private Music Made Public (August 04)
- Modernist Marathon (August 03)
- The Musical Imagination (August 03)
- Delicious Dissonance (August 01)
- What Ithaka Means (August 01)
- Romantic Cadence (July 30)
- Brahms the Progressive (July 30)
- "Vissi d'arte..." (July 29)
- "...and all the world is fresh and bright again." (July 27)
- Festive Day, Romantic Evening (July 27)
- Open House (July 25)
- "Origins of Modern String Playing" and Today's Rising Stars (July 25)
- Classical Bookends (July 23)
- Lesser Gives More (July 22)
- Fame is the Spur (July 22)
- Yes! (and Bird! and Bach!) (July 20)
- Baroque Heroics (July 19)
- Towards Bach (July 18)
- A Grand Beginning (July 17)
Towards Bach
Posted: July 18
Music@Menlo 2008 has officially begun. On Friday night, Stuart Isacoff led the summer’s first Encounter, an enlightening discussion on the subject of temperament. Aided by a fascinating array of visual illustrations, performances by festival artists, and two Steinway grand pianos, side-by-side on the stage of Martin Family Hall and tuned to different temperaments, Stuart examined the development of—and history’s heated philosophical disputes over—the tuning of the modern piano. Indeed, the piano was the star of the evening: Friday’s Prelude Performance featured crack performances of the keyboard music of Bach by Chamber Music Institute pianists Qing Jiang and Liza Stepanova. The festival season promises much more great music to come, beginning with this evening’s Prelude Performance (6:00 p.m., FREE), which offers concerti by Corelli and Handel; and “Towards Bach” (8:00 p.m.), comprising masterworks from the early seventeenth century through the apex of Bach’s oeuvre.