I have just returned from a two weeklong tour of America. It has been a delight from start to finish!

My first stop was at Coal Creek Canyon, Colorado. It was an honour to meet people there, some of whom, I am certain, will become lifelong friends. A deep felt thank you to Geoffrey Hoppe and Linda Benyo, who invited me over to play. And a special thanks to Bonnie Capelle, who took me under her wings, catered to my every need, and showed me a great time!

The incredible scenery up on the Colorado Mountains simply took my breath away. Though I felt a little lightheaded due to the height, it was totally worth it.

With jet leg still plaguing me, I flew over to Washington DC. We were blessed with most beautiful weather while staying in the Capital. Strathmore Mansion was every bit as enchanting as I remembered it. I so enjoyed playing the 1850 Broadwood grand housed there. I was privileged to give a masterclass the following morning, with some fine students: Justin Bird from the Peabody Conservatory, and Florence Rollwagen.

A big thank you to Georgina Javor, who made my visit comfortable and seamless.

It was for me a special time spent in Washington, as I got to catch up with my dear friends Paul & Elizabeth Murray and their beautiful children. Also, some family members came to hear me perform at the Mansion, which was really heart warming. They all travelled quite a distance to see me, in particular my lovely cousin, Michelle Joshua, who drove up from the depths of North Carolina. So quite a reunion all in all!

On I went to Boston, Massachusetts. Though I have played in Dr. Richard Marcus’ house before, it remains a place that never ceases to amaze. Richard boasts a 15 piece piano collection, which is ever growing. Hundreds of modern art works adorn his house walls including paintings, drawings and sketches, with numerous sculptures scattered over the wooden flooring of this four-story building.

Traditionally, these concerts involve the artist playing a few of the pianos, which are all semi-restored historical models. I played on five different instruments and thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful sounds and characteristics of each individual piano. These included an early Erard, two different Chickering pianos made by the specifically appropriate Boston born piano maker, an early Steinway (which sounds so different to later modern instruments) and a beautiful c.1875 Pleyel piano, just a few years younger than my own. The audience, of course, followed me from room to room as I moved on to the next piano. Just like in the olden days!

A huge thanks, therefore, to Dr. Richard Marcus for inviting me over yet again. It’s been an honour and a great pleasure.

From there, onwards I went that same evening to Ashburnham, where the Frederick piano collection is housed. Here I played one piano (thank goodness for that!), a beautiful 1871 Streicher, which worked so well with the programme performed; a reconstruction of Clara Schumann’s concert played that same exact year in London. Though the weather took a turn for the worse, the church was, nevertheless, packed full, with an inquisitive and incredibly warm audience that rewarded me with a standing ovation. A wonderful end to a most splendid tour!

A special thanks goes to the Fredericks, particularly Pat Frederick, who was the perfect host as always, and to my dear friends Romayne and Peter Timms, who looked after me. And finally, a big hug to Margo and Bob Connor for having been ever so kind driving me back to the airport that evening.

This visit has been a great experience for me, so much so, that I am eagerly looking forward to planning the next trip back.

Love to all,
Sharona

I wish to thank everyone at Tornaveen Festival for a splendid evening together. I very much enjoyed playing at Tornaveen hall… the acoustics were superb!

A very special thanks to Geoffrey Cormack for rebooking me for this gig, and for all the kind words from members of the audience afterwards. A thank you as well to the fortepiano ‘helpers’, and a big hug to Ian and Kirsteen for the lovely hospitality. I really enjoyed meeting you all, and hopefully we can get together again soon.

The gorgeous views and scenery on my drive up through the mountains, were somewhat balanced with the horrendous weather and snowfall on my way back to London… quite an experience!

Love to you all
Sharona

I wish to thank all fortepiano students, and congratulate you all on your achievements at the concert on Monday. All of you succeeded to create some wonderfully moving moments with your playing. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed teaching you, and hope you manage to make some of what we covered your own.

A special thank you as well to all the singers and string players who took part in this event. We couldn’t have done it without you!

A big thank you to John Thwaites and Martin Perkins for enabling us to put on this concert. And of course to my friend and colleague, David Ward, for his invaluable contributions to this collaborative effort.

Sharona

Article written in the Early Music Oxford Journals
4 November 2010 issue

Oxford Journals/Humanities/Early Music Volume 38/Issue 2/Pp.317-9

‘Carlophilipemanuelbachomania’

…’Music written on the page, which is straight and ordered, can actually hinder our good musical sense, which should not be ‘straight’ at all. In his highly influential Versuch, C. P. E. Bach gives us a clue as to how we can unstraighten our hearing simply by closing our eyes and shutting out all unnecessary visual influence. Is this the reason that blind musicians have played such a crucial role in the history of music? Try closing your eyes now for just a few moments, and listen to your surroundings—what do you notice? It is not the sound but rather your hearing that changes. You begin to take in more information because your brain is not busied with extraneous information. This is perhaps why the clavichord won C. P. E. Bach’s heart, beating in time with its own Bebung; the ability to produce the finest shades on this instrument, its subtle range of dynamic capability, provides the most satisfactory stimulus to such a refined ear as Bach’s. His career was shaped by this very scenario: Charles Burney wrote in 1772 that Bach’s ‘Compositions are calculated for great players and cultivated ears’ and that ‘he seems to have passed by all his co[n]temporaries in refinement’.

November 2010 issue

Although the clavichord is not the instrument featured here, Sharona Joshua nevertheless offers the utmost in refinement on her C. P. E. Bach: Selected fortepiano works (Rubato RRL A1104U, rec 2004, 75′). This disc has so much going for it: sudden pregnant pauses, fiery bits, tender moments, exemplary technique. The fortepiano here is a copy of a 1795 Schantz built by Christopher Barlow in 1996. Barlow prepared and tuned the instrument for this recording, but the temperament is not listed. This is often the case, unfortunately, for those who have an interest in this music and are curious to know such details.

Joshua has chosen four sonatas from Bach’s oeuvre of over 150, as well as three rondos and one imaginative fantasia. She opens the disc with the Sonata in G minor, Wq65/17 (H37), dating from the late 1740s. Her mastery of sudden rhetorical pauses makes our ears perk up in anticipation. She dashes whimsically about the keyboard, conjuring up chromatic fancy, challenging the usual formal transparency of the Viennese sonata popular in Bach’s day. What finally wins us over is that deep inner reflection, as if her playing were influenced by the tragic passing of someone dear; she delivers this in the Adagio affetuoso e sostenuto of the Sonata in F minor, Wq63/6 (H75) as well as in the Fantasia movement that follows. Her consummate musicianship allows us to imagine C. P. E. Bach the improviser sitting before the fortepiano that belonged to him at the time of his own passing in 1788′…
Dan McCoy

To read the full article please go to Early Music Oxford Journals ‘Carlophilipemanuelbachomania’ page

I wish to thank everyone at Leighton Buzzard Music Club for the welcoming, warm and enthusiastic reception at my concert performance yesterday – always a comforting moment for us artists.

Also I wish to thank David Phillips and ‘the crew’ in person for taking such good care of me, and for helping with the arduous task of getting the fortepiano up and into the theater. We made it…just about!

Please keep in touch!

All the very best,
Sharona

Sharona Joshua and Tom Guthrie will be recording a new CD in November. The programme is a reconstruction of one of Clara Schumann’s concert performances in London, dated 1st February, 1871.

We hope the CD will be out sometime in 2010!

I’ll keep you posted with news or updates on the progress

The following was posted in the International Record Review Magazine, September 2007

(Transcribed)
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

the first two discs in this survey of varied keyboard releases are of fortepiano works by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. The first contains four Sonatas, three Rondos and a Fantasia played by Sharona Joshua on an instrument by Christopher Barlow after a 1795 fortepiano by Johann Schantz. Apart from his music, CPE Bach’s legacy is complemented by his Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, which he revised extensively just before his death in 1788, and in which his statement that ‘a musician cannot move others unless he too is moved’ remains as the most succinct summation of the ideal nature of music-making.

one can take this too far – for, as Basil Lam described, CPE Bach’s startling effects can appear to be those of a composer who expresses himself by way of a ‘too-easy style in which anything can happen’. In this case, a fine line has surely to be drawn between the ‘effects’ and their effectiveness in performance in so far as they impinge on the inner life of the music, often expressed in eighteenth-century music in relatively unvarying tempos, before the rise of the notion of Romantic Empfindsamkeit. Yet, it is clear from his essay that, so far as CPE Bach was concerned, expressive feeling was not to be abjured in performance; and it is this fine line between emotion and intellect, shall we say, that Joshua draws from so well.

Here is a beautifully played and recorded disc, and the music itself rarely exhibits that characteristic to which Lam objected; there is nothing wrong in striking out new paths in music, as in any art, so long as the result makes sense to the recipient – in this case, us. Joshua combines scholarship with genuine musical understanding and an excellent technique. I recommend this disc strongly to those keen to explore keyboard music of the latter half of the eighteenth century, outside of Haydn and Mozart.
(Rubato Records RRLA1104U, 1 hour 15 minutes).

Robert Matthew-Walker
International Record Review

Reviews for my CPE Bach CD are now starting to come in.

The following was posted in The Herald Newspaper on the 18th of August 2007

(Transcribed)
CPE Bach: Fortepiano Works
Sharona Joshua
Rubato Records
£12.99 ***** (5 star)

Much is known about the life of CPE Bach, son of JS. Much less is known about his music. Some see it as transitional, between one era [the Baroque] and another [the Classical]. The music itself is seldom played.

You have to wonder why, listening to israeli pianist Sharona Joshua’s stunning performances in this collection of sonatas and fantasias. The breathtaking originality of the playing, wonderfully appropriate on the early fortepiano, with its intimate, dry tone, catches every revolutionary nuance of Bach’s unsung genius. If CPE Bach’s day ever comes then Joshua must be seen as his critical missionary.

On sale at www.sharonajoshua.com, [the internet (Amazon, CD Baby, Itunes) and at music shops all over London].

Michael Tumelty (18.08.2007 The Herald)

CPE Bach Selected Fortepiano Works, by Sharona Joshua

I’m really excited to announce the release of my latest CD covering the works of CPE Bach.

The music was played on my copy of a Schantz fortepiano dating from 1795. The piano was built by Christopher Barlow of Frome, Somerset.

I just discovered that the Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks listens to my music as he does his daily exercises. How’s that for an endorsement!

Sharona x

Read on for the track listing and details of how to purchase online.

The full track listing is as follows:

Sonata in g minor, Wq.65/17, H.47
1 Allegro 4:32
2 Adagio 3:16
3 Allegro assai 4:07

Fantasie in E flat major, Wq.58/6, H.277
4 Allegro di molto 6:22

Sonata No.6 in f minor, Wq.63/6, H.75
5 Allegro di molto 3:09
6 Adagio affetuoso e sostenuto 3:49
7 Fantasia (Allegro moderato; Largo; Allegro moderato) 4:54

Rondo in B flat major, Wq.58/5, H.267
8 Allegro 5:41

Sonata in C major, Wq.65/36, H.157
9 Allegro moderato 6:36
10 Andante 3:03
11 Allegretto 4:52

Rondo in c minor, Wq.59/4, H.283
12 Allegro 5:17

Sonata in b minor, Wq.49/6, H.36
13 Moderato 6:14
14 Adagio non molto 3:48
15 Allegro 3:18

Rondo in F major, Wq.57/5, H.266
16 Allegretto 6:00

Total running time 75:07

To buy a copy of my CD online, click on the ‘Buy Now’ button (below). This will take you to my page at PayPal where you can arrange payment. I am selling the CD online for £12.99 including P&P to UK addresses only. Please contact me if you would like to place an order for delivery overseas.

You can now listen to some of my recordings, direct from my website!

Simply click on the ‘My Music’ tab at the top of the page to see what is available.

Enjoy!

Sharona x.

The fortepiano is a copy of a Johann Schantz instrument from 1795 (based in the Holburne Museum in Bath) made by the harpsichord & fortepiano maker Christopher Barlow of Frome