BY STUART ISACOFF [NY Sun, 15 November 2005]
“Bach at Leipzig,” Itamar Moses’s farce about an 18th-century contest among seven musicians vying for a post in Leipzig left open by the death of Johann Kuhnau – a position eventually filled by Johann Sebastian Bach – brings to mind a cartoon drawing I saw several years ago. In it, the venerable Bach is attempting to compose at home amid the ruckus of children chasing each other around the room and a wife screaming from the kitchen, “Johann – take out the garbage!”