Bach Adagio Bwv 974

Johann Sebastian Bach hardly ever left his native Saxony, yet he was always up to date on what was going on elsewhere in Europe. Naturally, he paid close attention to innovations from Italy, the cradle of the concertante style, and instilled transalpine sparkle in his brilliant counterpoint, especially in his keyboard works. Proof of this may be found in the pieces based on originals by the Venetians Antonio Vivaldi and Benedetto Marcello, in which Bach transcends everything with his polyphonic genius. In the large-scale Italian Concerto, the future composer of the Goldberg Variations revisits Corelli and, once again, Vivaldi. After several solo recordings devoted to musical dynasties (La Famille Forqueray, La Famille Rameau and Les Freres Francoeur), Justin Taylor sets off on a voyage of exploration of Bach and Italy.

The Bach recordings on this double CD with Boris Bloch were made over a period of fifteen years. They document the pianist’s engagement with the timelessness of this music. “My engagement with Bach grants me the happiest moments on the piano today and leads me on a road where there are no walls and no final destinations.” (Boris Bloch)

Johann Sebastian Bach - Alison Balsom - Works For Trumpet
C. Carey / A. Ibragimova / A. Ross / M. Caudle
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 330 MB | Part. Artwork: 21 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: EMI Classics # 7243 5 58047 2 3 | Country/Year: Europe 2005
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque, Trumpet

…Balsom's tone is tighter and darker than André's, and she excels at legato playing, while remaining within an appropriate style. She is not as "punchy" as André often can be. Given her age and her educational background – she was a pupil of Håkan Hardenberger and John Wallace – she is likely to be a versatile and stylistically informed player no matter what she does. This is an impressive CD, and while it touches no deep emotional wells, it invites the listener to stay tuned!

For fanciers of the trumpet and brilliant trumpeting, this is a wonderful disc. Bach, as far as we know, and unlike Telemann, Stölzel, and many other Baroque composers, not to mention Haydn and Hummel who followed them, did not write any concerted works specifically for the trumpet. Nonetheless, his assignment of important obbligato parts to it in a number of his cantatas, orchestral suites, and of course the Brandenburg No. 2, attests both to his appreciation of the instrument and to the high expectations he had for its technical mastery.

With this volume 4 in a complete recording of Bach’s keyboard works whose ingenuity has been underlined by every reviewer (e.g. Gramophone, July 2020), Benjamin Alard continues to explore the Weimar period, known as that of his ‘early mastery’. After À la française, we turn to Italy, where the Vivaldian concerto reigned in Venice. The young Bach created here a wonderful space of freedom between the transcriber and the improviser. For ‘if transcription is a matter of freedom, it is also a matter of powerful imagination: each piece on this recording transports us into a Venetian universe that fascinated Bach as much as it inspired him’, as Benjamin Alard demonstrates on three exceptional instruments.