Articles

In Leipzig, a hit parade of Bach’s cantatas!

In Leipzig, Bach is no longer simply celebrated: placed “Im Dialog” (“In Dialogue”), the theme chosen for 2026, he becomes a living, shared experience. From June 11 to 21, the Bachfest takes the form of a participatory festival, in which audiences from around the world contribute to the programming, beginning with a chart-topping countdown of Bach’s cantatas. Michael Maul, the festival’s director, speaks about this collective adventure, bringing together heritage, research, and leading performers.

by Roland H. Dippel 11 June 2026

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Pictures of the Week

Parma, Versailles, Maguelone, Regensburg, Lyon, Berkeley

This week, early music travels from Versailles to Parma, from Maguelone to Regensburg, and on to the San Francisco Bay Area. Between rediscoveries, new creations and major festival events, Gasparini, Corselli, Vivaldi, Bach and Heinrich Isaac form a richly varied panorama of a Baroque scene already turning towards the pleasures of summer.

by Total Baroque 11 June 2026

Video of the week

La Bella Noeva by Ensemble Accordone

As the Maguelone Early Music Festival wraps up its 43rd edition this week, Total Baroque invites you to revisit the acclaimed performance by the Accordone ensemble and Marco Beasley from 2011, in a programme that brings together Gregorian chant and tarantellas, erudition and spontaneity.

by Total Baroque 11 June 2026

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The first complete Demachy recording by Flore Seube

CD in four questions

Rediscovered seventeenth-century "Pièces de violle"

The first complete Demachy recording by Flore Seube

With her complete recording of Sieur Demachy’s “Pièces de violle”, Flore Seube gives voice once again to a mysterious figure of the Grand Siècle. The result of ten years of research and an intimate engagement with this repertoire, this recording reveals a sophisticated, lively, and refined style of viol music that balances textual fidelity, French sensibility, and the art of polyphony.

by Gabriel Davigneau 10 June 2026

Three concerts for a great night of early music in Nuremberg

Interview

Musikfest ION & BR-KLASSIK – live and streamed

Three concerts for a great night of early music in Nuremberg

Solomon’s Knot, Maayan Licht and Chanticleer feature on the programme of Nuremberg’s Great Night of Music, organised on Friday 19 June by the ION festival and the radio and television broadcaster BR-KLASSIK. The three concerts will be filmed and broadcast live on the broadcaster’s channels, as well as on Total Baroque Magazine and its YouTube channel. Thorsten Preuß, Deputy Head of the Music Department at BR/ARD’s Nuremberg studio, tells us more about the event and about his organisation’s commitment to early music.

by Jean-Jacques Schaettel 9 June 2026

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40 Years of the Saint-Michel-en-Thiérache Festival

Festival

The story of an organ and a ruined abbey

40 Years of the Saint-Michel-en-Thiérache Festival

From a ruined abbey on the Franco-Belgian border, in northern France, Jean-Michel Verneiges decided to create a festival. And with good reason: the abbey houses a precious treasure, a historic organ three hundred years old. Today, the Baroque festival of Saint-Michel-en-Thiérache celebrates its 40th anniversary, from 7 June to 5 July, with a special anniversary edition featuring 12 concerts and bringing together leading figures in the field, including Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI, Julien Chauvin and Le Concert de la Loge, Christina Pluhar and L’Arpeggiata, and the French viol player Lucile Boulanger.

by Lara Othman 9 June 2026

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CD – New Releases

Benjamin Alard

Bach: Chaconnes BWV 1178 & 1179

With this new release, Benjamin Alard adds two freshly authenticated works to his ambitious complete recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s keyboard music. Centred on two chaconnes recently restored to the Cantor, the French keyboard player continues his exploration of an instrumental world in which dance, variation and contrapuntal architecture come together in the same expressive concentration.

by Total Baroque 5 June 2026

CD – New Releases

Dmytro Kokoshynskyy

Music for These Troubled Times

With this first solo recording, harpsichordist Dmytro Kokoshynskyy offers far more than a journey through the golden age of the English virginalists. Centred on Tallis, Byrd, Bull, Gibbons and Dowland, among others, he builds an intimate meditation on music as refuge, remedy and mirror of troubled times, extended into our own day by KHORA by the composer Maxim Shalygin.

by Total Baroque 5 June 2026

Pictures of the Week

Paris, Venice, Lübeck, Brno, Basel, Melk

From Paris to Venice, from Brno to Basel, the baroque news brings rediscoveries, major figures and European stages into dialogue: Antonia Bembo enters the repertory of the Paris Opera, Domenico Scarlatti is reborn in Venice, while Handel and Bach continue to nourish the spring festivals.

by Total Baroque 4 June 2026

Video of the week

“Phénix” with Lucile Boulanger

Four dancers, a viola da gamba player and an electronic sound world: with Phénix, Mourad Merzouki creates a raw encounter between hip-hop and Baroque music. Around Lucile Boulanger, the piece unfolds through aesthetic friction until the hatching of a bird as unexpected as it is remarkable.

by Total Baroque 4 June 2026

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Summer festivals

Forests, Hanseatic Cities and Royal Theatres

NORTHERN & EASTERN EUROPE

From the palaces of Stockholm to the abbeys of Slovenia, from the Baltic shores to the royal theatres of Scandinavia, early music traces a summer route through Northern and Eastern Europe. Baroque operas, Renaissance polyphony, intimate festivals, and major international gatherings bring heritage, spirituality, and creativity into dialogue, at the heart of landscapes long absent from the major musical maps of Europe.

by Total Baroque 4 June 2026

Summer festivals

Between Major Cities, Historic Churches, and Summer Academies

CANADA – UNITED STATES

From Quebec to British Columbia, from Maine to California, Canada and the United States reveal another geography of early music. Between Baroque festivals, summer academies, major urban venues and more intimate settings, Bach, Handel, Monteverdi, and Purcell meet North American musical energy, through a blend of tradition, rediscovery, and historically informed performance.

by Lucas Hung 4 June 2026

In Leipzig, a hit parade of Bach’s cantatas!

Parma, Versailles, Maguelone, Regensburg, Lyon, Berkeley

La Bella Noeva by Ensemble Accordone

The first complete Demachy recording by Flore Seube

Three concerts for a great night of early music in Nuremberg

40 Years of the Saint-Michel-en-Thiérache Festival

Bach: Chaconnes BWV 1178 & 1179

Music for These Troubled Times

Paris, Venice, Lübeck, Brno, Basel, Melk

“Phénix” with Lucile Boulanger

NORTHERN & EASTERN EUROPE

CANADA – UNITED STATES