Belioz Complete Work

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.

In this second instalment of complete keyboard works, Benjamin Alard demonstrates with splendid eloquence how invaluable the young Bach’s north German experience proved to be; his attentive examination of the works of the great organ masters and his craving for all kinds of music significantly broadened the stylistic foundations of his keyboard writing. The wide range of works presented here, complemented by pieces by Buxtehude, Reinken and Pachelbel, illustrates in exemplary fashion the power of a master in the making.

Bach’s youth was a vast field of observation. From the years of apprenticeship in Ohrdruf, where his precocious artistic sensibility was dazzlingly demonstrated, to his first major post as organist at Arnstadt, Bach constantly enriched his musical culture, underpinned by a strong family tradition and driven by iconic respect for the old masters, crucial affinities and unfailing curiosity. As the prelude to a complete recording of a new kind, the eloquence and vigilant intelligence of the admirable Benjamin Alard’s playing are the ideal medium to reveal the technical mastery of Bach’s early keyboard works and convey the essence of this young composer’s musical discourse at a time when he was already measuring himself against the yardstick of predecessors and contemporaries alike.