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

Tuesday, 31 March 2009, Lunchtime concert (1pm)
Song recital at City Music Society
Bishopsgate Institute, London

Concerto Cristofori

Thomas Guthrie baritone
Sharona Joshua 1853 Pleyel piano

It was good to catch up with Sharona Joshua again, this time to hear her accompanying Thomas Guthrie on her Pleyel fortepiano, of 1853, in Die Schöne Müllerin at the Bishopsgate Institute Great Hall.

Schuberts gift for translating lyric poetry into song remains unmatched, but modern performance does him few favours. When written, song cycles like Die Schöne Müllerin, were intimately sung, accompanied by a wooden framed fortepiano, which was well suited to chamber recitals. Performance in large halls may suit modern fortepianos, but not lieder recitals; their use is probably best confined to recording studios with voice and instrument carefully balanced – the voice unforced, and the piano commentary picturesque. What of period performance then? When given in a public auditorium, volume of sound is so important, that without amplification, the nuances by which Schubert magically re-creates poetry in music are usually unheard. Stepping up the volume by using a later, iron framed, fortepiano was highly imaginative, although still representing a considerable compromise in this auditorium.

Sharona Joshua, a master of early piano, and Thomas Guthrie, no less so in lieder, gave a spellbinding and natural performance of this glorious music. We hope and pray for a CD recording in which her fortepiano and his voice are timelessly matched.
David Erdman

Wednesday, 9 April 2008, 7.45pm
Fortepiano recital at Letchworth Music Club
Howgills, 42 South View, Letchworth

CPE Bach & All That Followed…

Recital by Sharona Joshua Schantz fortepiano

I heard Sharona play this programme in the intimate concert venue of Howgills, which ideally suited the quiet volume of the Schantz fortepiano. Listening to works for early piano requires a lot of practice, but for those, like me, who prefer pre Romantic music played on period instruments, true period performance is a rare delight, even allowing for the discontinuities engendered by inherently low sustainability in experimental compositions by CPE Bach. I found the performance of the early Beethoven sonata absolutely fascinating; to hear his music, written for fortepiano, probably the very Schantz he owned, without dicontinuity but even less notes, and the power reserved for posthumous performance, told us so much about the genius of that composer and why his music transcends all styles and invention. Bravo Sharona…encore.
David Erdman

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)

Saturday 30th September 2006 – Friends School, Saffron Walden 7.30 pm

Concerto Cristofori

Sharona Joshua Harpsichord, Fortepiano
Peter Hanson Violin
Nia Harries Cello

The Saffron Walden and District Music Club was privileged to welcome Concerto Cristofori (keyboards, cello and violin) for the opening concert of the 2006-2007 season. Specialising in period performance, this group gave a lively and uplifting recital of eighteenth century classics, including a Haydn trio, sonatas by Bach and Boccherini, and a suite for solo harpsichord by Handel, the E major which includes the well-known `Harmonious Blacksmith’ Air and variations, played with masterly style by keyboard player Sharona Joshua. It was intriguing to observe the difference between the harpsichord, which can only be played at one volume, and the fortepiano, which is capable of changes of volume and tone colour. Both instruments were superbly played, in particular in the final piece of the evening, the C major trio by Mozart. The difficulties inherent in playing authentic period string instruments were overcome with great finesse by cellist Nia Harries in the Boccherini cello sonata, and in violinist Peter Hanson’s spirited rendition of the Bach Sonata in A.
Val Norton

“Joshua brought a freshness and clarity to the music that made it sound newly minted.

She brought a sparkle to Haydn 55th Piano Sonata, which took on a playful character beneath her fingers, while the set of variations that opened his 58th Sonata where richly elaborated and in the succeeding Rondo she conveyed as great enjoyment in her music-making as she gave to her audience.”

Sharona Joshua at the Purcell Room

In her Fortepiano Fantasy at the Purcell Room on 6 December, Sharona Joshua opened the ears of her audience to works by Mozart, Haydn and Carl Philipp Emanual Bach as they would have sounded to the composer contemporaries. Playing on her modern copy of a Viennese fortepiano built around 1795by the eminent instrument maker Johann Schantz, Joshua brought a freshness and clarity to the music that made it sound newly minted.

In Mozart D minor Fantasy k397 she explored the kaleidoscopic variations of mood which the composer heightened by dramatic pauses, cramming a rich tapestry of sound into this short work. The greater depth of the A minor Sonata K310/300d elicited from her a strongly felt dramatic response to its opening Allegro and a beautifully judged account of the slow movement.

In two pieces by CPE Bach Joshua rose to the improvisatory nature of the music; relishing its unpredictable twists and turns, she despatched the E flat Fantasy H277 with playing of sparkling virtuosity, and fully exploited the rapid succession of mood changes that the composer indulged in, in the C minor Rondo H283.

Haydn himself was an admirer of the pianos made by the Schantz brothers and owned more that one of them. He especially appreciated their lightness of tone, a notable quality of the sound that characterised Sharona Joshua playing of this 18th century music. She brought a sparkle to Haydn 55th Piano Sonata, which took on a playful character beneath her fingers, while the set of variations that opened his 58th Sonata where richly elaborated and in the succeeding Rondo she conveyed as great enjoyment in her music-making as she gave to her audience.

Margaret Davies
Musical Opinion March 2004

“The instruments came into their own in such pieces as the cheeky Chi Bussa (who’s knocking?) where Jacob Heringman on the lute and Sharona Joshua on the harpsichord had a witty exchange of knocks and taps…”

Concerto Cristofori – Italian Virtuosi
Purcell Room Friday 21 March

Recorder and viol devotees, lured by the magical names of Pamela Thorby and Susanna Pell, and hoping for incandescent displays of virtuosity, were only disappointed in that their luminaries were allotted so little time in the spotlight. The same could be said of Jacob Heringman’s compelling intricacies on the lute. Centre stage was, however, beautifully occupied by Faye Newton’s limpid soprano. Her diction was clear enough to understand the original Italian text, and the many virtuosi flourishes, runs and trills, such as in Luzzasco Luzzaschi’s poignant O Primavera were both flawless and wonderfully moving. By contrast, in the popular Ostinato vo’ seguire Faye’s lovely soprano was combined with an exciting filigree of rapid recorder variations.

This varied feast of madrigals, dances, rustic items, and pieces in the new stille recitativo, with its emphasis on portraying strong emotions, gave a good idea of the melting pot of ideas and styles prevailing in 16th century Italy and Venice. The instruments came into their own in such pieces as the cheeky Chi Bussa (who’s knocking?) where Jacob Heringman on the lute and Sharona Joshua on the harpsichord had a witty exchange of knocks and taps, contrasting more obviously virtuosic pieces such as the Divisions for viol on Ancor che col partire by Richardo Rogniono, played with great panache by Susanna Pell, and Pamela Thorby’s powerful Divisions on Un gay bergier by Crequillon.

For those with perfect pitch the harpsichord (a copy of the Royal college of Music’s Trasuntino harpsichord, commissioned by Sharona Joshua) afforded a rare opportunity to hear early music performed in such unexpected keys as E, A and B major. With such an unusually low pitch (a=348) the other instruments also adopted unusual keys and tunings, which contributed overall to a pleasing sense of brilliance and mellowness.

Sharona Joshua will be giving a solo recital of Renaissance music on the copy of the Trasuntino harpsichord on Sunday June 29, at 7pm at the Streatham synagogue, 45 Leigham Court Road, SW16.

The Classical Source – Helen France

“There was also an exquisite fortepiano concert by Sharona Joshua that proved there is nothing greater than Mozart.”

For full details go to the bookafuture website

“The Memorial Hall hosted Zeitgeist: a relatively sparse crowd were rewarded with gorgeous readings of Bach sonatas from this fine flute-and-harpsichord duo.”

For full details go to the Cambriaarts website