The Art of

In his Opus 300 Carl Czerny compiled a unique keyboard compendium of all the stylistic facets of European music from the Baroque until far into the Romantic era – an audio history of music en miniature featuring preludes as our guides and an overwhelming variety of characters, forms, and pianistic invention. The 120 finely chiseled preludes range from the aphoristic extreme of ten to twenty seconds in length to the just as aphoristically packed narrative and rhapsodic forms of a maximum of three to four minutes. Their numerical midpoint is formed by sixteen very short interludes that are brilliant examples of modulations, each proceeding from C major to all the other major keys. Like most of the preludes from No. 60 to No. 71, they represent variants of this art form originally distinguished by improvisation: as interludes they build audio bridges from one (imaginary) work to the next and link what would appear to be beyond linking. The work of course is interpreted in its entirety on two CDs – by none other than Kolja Lessing, one of the most versatile musicians of our times and a violinist and pianist who combines interpretive and musicological work in his many significant contributions to music culture.

Surrounded by a certain air of mystery and revered as a relic, The Art of Fugue is roundly praised for its complex, mathematical nature.

Surrounded by a certain air of mystery and revered as a relic, The Art of Fugue is roundly praised for its complex, mathematical nature. However, these works are also movingly lyrical, and deserve to be enjoyed for their pure beauty, just as one enjoys the rhythms and sounds in the words of a poem, regardless of form and sometimes even meaning. Following the last version of J.S. Bach's autograph manuscript, New Collegium champions in "Lemniscate" the reconciliation and celebration of all these aspects, bringing to the fore both the cerebral brilliance as well as the emotive intensity of this iconic masterpiece, allowing it to be both light and profound. The rich instrumentation of woodwinds, brass, strings and harpsichord allows for expressive characters to be exaggerated, hints at other musical styles, and paints diverse atmospheres, infusing fantasy and life into these twenty fugues and canons.

The recorder quartet quintaessentia is the leading ensemble of its kind in Brazil. This label debut for the ensemble gives extraordinary audibility to Bach’s brilliant counterpoint.

Most classical music lovers know – or at least know of – J.S. Bach’s The Art of Fugue. It’s sometimes described as the composer’s greatest creation, and spoken about in terms of its mathematical beauty, purity of musical thought, and thematic complexity. But strikingly, none of these descriptions tell us very much about what the music actually sounds like – or indeed what The Art of Fugue is, and who it’s for.

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