In the Washington Post:
Trevor Pinnock presents Landowska tribute, by Anne Midgette
Lewis, Dettra offer Bach’s adaptations, by Joan Reinthaler
Both concerts featured Baroque keyboard music, and opened up all kinds of questions around the issue of historically informed performance (HIP). When Wanda Landowska had her custom Pleyel harpsichords built in 1912, they were anachronisms, throwbacks to a bygone time; today, they seem equally so, but due to the fact that they are so unlike the harpsichords built today, after decades of research into early-music practice and style. Bruce Haynes’s excellent book The End of Early Music offers a smart and down-to-earth look at the development of HIP and, in effect, the impossibility of developing any kind of performance style that doesn’t reflect the conditions and traditions of its own time -- witness the difference between Landowska’s understanding of “Bach’s way” of playing his music, and Pinnock’s understanding of the same thing today.
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