Sheer joy & plenty of welly: the marimbas of The Wave Quartet join the Academy of Ancient Music for Bach concertos & more

Rhythm Across Time  – Bach: Concerto in A minor for four harpsichords, BWV1065, Concerto in C major for two harpsichords, BWV1061, Bertali, Geminiani, Handel, Festa, Piazzolla; The Wave Quartet, Academy of Ancient Music; Milton Court Concert Hall, Barbican
Reviewed 14 May 2026

Marimba quartet and period strings join together for a sympathetic exploration of Baroque music with a focus on Bach’s multi-harpsichord concertos, creating a magical sound world that remained sympathetic to the original yet transported us elsewhere 

The word marimba is of Bantu origin and instruments like the marimba are present throughout the entirety of sub-Saharan Africa. The instrument became popular in Mexico, Central and South America from the 16th century, and it was here that it developed into the modern chromatic instrument. The first chromatic marimba was produced in Mexico in the 1890s. 

The idea of a marimba playing with a period instrument ensemble seems counter-intuitive but marimba player Bogdan Bácanu formed the Wave Quartet in 2008 specifically to explore marimba adaptations of Bach’s concertos for two harpsichords and the Quartet has gone on to collaborate with ensembles such as the Mozarteum orchestra in Salzburg and L’Orfeo Barockorchester. In 2019 as part of Sound Unbound: The Barbican Classical Weekender, The Wave Quartet played with the Academy of Ancient Music. Since then, they have performed together in Vienna and Cologne, but the partnership only returned to London last night.

The Wave Quartet (Bogdan Bácanu, Nico Gerstmayer, Christoph Sietzen, Emiko Uchiyama) joined the strings of the Academy of Ancient Music (directed from the violin by Bojan Čičić) for a pair of concerts at West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge (13 May) and Milton Court Concert Hall, Barbican (14 May). We caught the Barbican concert where the ensemble played music by Antonio Bertali, Francesco Geminiani, Handel, and Costanzo Festa plus Bach’s Concerto for Four Harpsichords in A minor and Concerto for Two Harpsichords in C major, along with movements from Piazzolla’s Concerto ‘Aconcagua’. 

The concert’s title was Rhythm Across Time and many of the Baroque works in the programme were linked by their use of the Chaconne. There is a rather apt parallel here, because the Chaconne was originally a fast South American dance that migrated to Europe in the 16th century and which was modified by European composers, reminding us of the way a South American folk-instrument was developed and migrated also.

We began with Antonio Bertali (1605-1669), one of the Italian composers who migrated to Vienna to work for the Holy Roman Empire. His Ciaccona in C major (from around 1662) was played by the strings with two marimbas (Bogdan Bácanu and Christoph Sietzen) but featured fine solo violin playing from Bojan Čičić. There was a rather otherworldly sound to the piece with the contrast between the soft edged marimba sound (very different to the plucked harpsichord) and the edgier strings.

This was explored further in Geminiani’s Concerto Grosso No. 12 ‘La Folia’ based on Corelli’s sonata. Here Sietzen’s marimba provided the continuo, the crispness of the string playing under pinned by the gentle (yet deceptively strong) marimba and the whole ensemble seemed to relish exploring these different textures.

Bácanu and Sietzen then played Handel’s Chaconne in G major HWV 435 without strings. The transfer of the harpsichord to marimba took the music in a different direction. All the notes were there, this was not a radical reinvention. Yet the marimba sound brought and element of magic and watching the two players, I was struck by the enormous physicality required to produce music of such delicacy.

The first half concluded with all four marimba players as soloists in Bach’s Concerto for Four Harpsichords. Bach created the concert by transcribing Vivaldi’s concerto for four violins, so the move to marimba was only another step. Played on four harpsichords this piece can sound a buzzy mess with a lack of definition to the music as well as there being the inherent balance problems between harpsichord and string ensemble.

The first movement was seductive indeed and immediately had me convinced of this solution. The chords in the second movement were strong yet without emphasis in the sense that the sound lacks a real edge to it and much of the movement was quite free with just cello support. The finale brought out the sheer joy the players felt, along with their ability to play with plenty of welly to balance the strong string sound, though the very end seemed to slightly lack pizzazz. 

Astor Piazzolla wrote his Concerto Aconcagua in 1979 for himself as bandoneón. We heard the second and third movements in Uchiyama’s transcription for four marimbas. They began with a gentle shimmer with hints of rhythmic figures arising from this leading to more melodic strains emerging, with an interesting edge to the harmonies. The final movement had plenty of firm hitting going on, and the sound world seemed almost Balinese at times, but the underlying rhythms were engaging. The middle section was suddenly gently but worked itself up into a hard-hitting conclusion.

Five of the strings, Bojan Čičić (violin), Jane Rogers and Jordan Bowron (viola), Joseph Crouch and Imogen Seth-Smith (cello) played a selection of variations on La Spagna by Costanzo Festa (c1485-1545). Festa worked at the Sistine Chapel and is best known for his motets and madrigals, but he wrote 125 variations on the 15th century Iberian dance, La Spagna. We heard four of them, the sound world in the slow movements being very much akin to viols, contrasting with the two livelier movements with fast rhythmic divisions over the cantus firmus

We ended with Bach, his Concerto for two harpsichords in C major. Bach originally wrote this simply for two harpsichords and adapted it into a concerto for his Collegium Musicum in Leipzig. Here we had four marimbas creating some attractively intricate textures, though watching the players I was struck by the technical dexterity and physicality needed to create such a finely accurate web of sound. The middle movement was marimbas alone, creating a magical sound world that had a floating quality to it. The lightness being a world away from the intense physicality of plucked string harpsichords. The final movement began with just two marimbas in an intricate fugue, then three then four, then strings as well in a seductive conclusion.