Success or Excess? The Boston Early Music Festival 2011, by Larry Wallach
1. Frances Fitch - French claveçin music (Clérambault, Le Roux, Rameau, Jacquet de la Guerre)
2. David Hyun-su Kim - Beethoven and Schumann on the Fortepiano (Goethe House)
3. Boston Camerata (Anne Azéma, Joel Cohen) - Roman de Fauvel
4. William Porter - Leipzig Chorale Preludes
5. Jordi Savall - Irish Music
6. BEMF Orchestra (Robert Mealy) - Bach, Corelli, Handel
7. Keyboard Festival: Harpsichord Concerts
a. Peter Sykes
b. Luca Guglielmi
8. Keyboard Festival: Fortepiano concerts
a. Christoph Hammer - Beck, Clementi
b. Kristian Bezuidenhout - Mozart Sonatas
9. Michael Sponsellor, et al. - J. Chr. Bach: “Meine Freundin, du bist schön”
10. Kristian Bezuidenhout et al. - Mozart: Fantasy, Piano Quartets
Part I
The number, variety, and quality range of the BEMF musical events is so vast that it induces a kind of giddiness or vertigo over the course of the week that can be taken as either the frenzy of enthusiasm or the disorientation of overload. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Going to concerts is always a social event, and attending a series of them along with numbers of articulate, knowledgeable people (including the total stranger who might be wearing an “Earlier than Thou” T-shirt) with whom you can share information and compare responses is stimulating—at the very worst—at best highly enlightening.

