John Eliot Gardiner’s new book, Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven (Knopf, 2013), is garnering high praise.
Amanda Foreman writes, “Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven is a unique portrait of one of the greatest musical geniuses of all time by one of the greatest musical geniuses of our own age. John Eliot Gardiner uses his extraordinary immersion in Bach’s music to illuminate Bach the man more brilliantly than in any previous work, and has created his own deeply moving work of art.”
Philip Pullman says, ”John Eliot Gardiner’s book is, apart from anything else, a tremendous feat of narrative: he has the rare gift of always putting the camera in the right place. He tells this long and richly involved story in a way that makes everything clear, and sets the life and the music in a historical perspective where every detail is relevant and every comment illuminating. Simply as a biography this is splendid, but the fact that it comes with such a wealth of musical understanding and experience makes it invaluable.”
Mr. Gardiner recently hosted a BBC documentary on the life and music of Bach, which you can watch below:
HT: Horst Friebig
