Articles for category: News

December 26, 2025

Editorial Team

Quiet Mastery: Sergei Babayan at the 2025 Montréal Bach Festival

Sergei Babayan walked to the piano Thursday evening and played Bach’s Aria from the Goldberg Variations. Extraordinarily slow. Almost suspended in time. Then thirty-five more pieces unfolded across two hours. At the end, as an encore, he played the Aria again—the same notes, but heard entirely differently because of what had come between. The opening Aria moved at a pace that felt almost expressionistic. Babayan wasn’t interested in Bach’s proportions or historical accuracy. He was interested in what happens when you let a single line breathe without rushing. Each note arrived as if from a distance. The touch was light,

December 28, 2024

Editorial Team

Festival Bach Montréal 2024: Highlights, Surprises, and Reflections

When the Festival Bach Montréal 2024 concluded this December, it left behind a tapestry of sounds and experiences as intricately woven as the composer’s most elaborate fugues. For nearly a month, the city— and indeed beyond stretching to Québec and Ottawa—reverberated with the legacy of Johann Sebastian Bach, reimagined through a rich program that mixed time-honored traditions with contemporary approaches. This year’s edition offered a remarkable journey that began with open-armed accessibility and culminated in moments of shimmering grandeur. The festival, which has become a touchstone for Bach aficionados in North America since its modest six-day inception in 2005, has

February 18, 2024

Editorial Team

Renowned Japanese Maestro Seiji Ozawa Passes Away at 88

Seiji Ozawa, the dynamic Japanese conductor who burst onto the Western classical music scene in the 1960s and ’70s and later helmed the Boston Symphony Orchestra for nearly three decades, passed away on Tuesday at his residence in Tokyo. He was 88 years old. His management office, Veroza, confirmed that the cause of death was heart failure, as announced on Friday. Mr. Ozawa battled health issues since 2010 when he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Despite undergoing surgery and facing back problems exacerbated during his recovery, he never fully regained his health and later contended with heart valve disease. A