Music for Galway puts focus on Bach

Renowned harpsichordist Malcolm Proud will perform all six of Bach’s keyboard Partitas over two concerts in Galway on Friday, November 18 and Saturday, November 19 in the Aula Maxima, Ground floor at NUIG.

The six keyboard Partitas, offered by their composer J.S. Bach “to music lovers as refreshment for their spirits”, are rich and complex works and have been described by Baroque expert, Dr David Ledbetter as belonging “with the supreme achievements of western art music – the Baroque equivalent of Beethoven’s piano sonatas”.

Harpsichord player Malcolm Proud combines his work as an instrumental teacher and senior lecturer in the Music Department of Waterford Institute of Technology with an international career as a harpsichordist and organist. He is also the choirmaster and organist of St Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny. He has given concerts and made over 30 recordings with some of the world’s leading ensembles, instrumentalists and singers including Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s English Baroque Soloists and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra.  

He has toured throughout Europe, North American and Japan and is a member of the Irish Baroque Orchestra and a founder member of Camerata Kilkenny.

Malcom Proud’s concerts will be the first performances held in the newly refurbished and completely revamped venue. Both concerts will be introduced by David Ledbetter, an internationally recognised authority on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century keyboard music and performance practice.  

Dr Ledbetter’s fascination with Bach’s music is reflected in two recent books; Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier: The 48 Preludes and Fugues, and Unaccompanied Bach: Performing the Solo Works (both Yale University Press), which has been hailed as “the definitive guide” in The Times Literary Supplement.

On Saturday afternoon, the Huston School for Film and Digital Media is hosting a screening of The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, a 1968 film directed by Jean Marie Straub and Danielle Huillet featuring renowned harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt as J.S. Bach.

The Huston School is near the Fisheries Fields across from Galway Cathedral, and behind the Irish Centre for Human Rights. Admission to the film is free with a concert ticket.

Tickets €20, members/concessions €16, weekend tickets €20 from Music for Galway 091 705962 or Opus 2, 4 High Street, Galway or www.tht.ie