Dmitry Badiarov – Bach | Music | Conducting | Ensemble Direction | Violoncello da spalla | Viola da spalla | Conducting

Bach Methodology

Bach, Blog, Early Music, Essays, Marlboro Music / Koji Otsuki

Since I left the Midwest and moved back to Philadelphia a couple of years ago, I haven’t made music with any period instrumentalists here. In early January this year, I debuted my violoncello da spalla, beautifully built by Dmitry Badiarov, in a concert of Bach cantata BWV 41 with the period instruments, but that was not in Philadelphia— it was in Bloomington, Indiana. I should be networking harder to make early music connections here, indeed, but it isn’t easy for me… It is so true that your networking base and strong connections are developed while you’re in school, and it gets much harder after that. But since I left Bloomington, […]

Bach Methodology Read More »

Violoncello piccolo da spalla

(Originally posted on October 30, 2010) This is a dream instrument for any violinists and violists who want to play the cello. And this is the dream instrument for a guy like me who wants to do Bach cantatas that call for this instrument. It is, for me, a quite essential instrument! Sure, you can go buy a chin-cello to play some cello pieces if you are a violinist/violist. But this instrument has an E string that chin-cello doesn’t have, and it is more like a smaller cello while the chin-cello is just like a huge viola. This instrument is often called the violoncello piccolo [da spalla (shoulder)], or the