Fugue

Notated on four staves, as though intended for some unspecified set of instruments (or even voices? or keyboard?), these thirteen erudite contrapuncti, four canons, and an unfinished triple fugue—incorporating the letters of Bach’s name—are often considered to be his musical testament. Shrouded in myths traceable to its very origins, The Art of Fugue is a puzzle for the performers and for the listeners alike, but when a brilliant string quartet takes up the challenge, a solution becomes obvious, and the music takes flight.

Bálint Karosi is a Hungarian organist and composer, especially noted for his expertise in period-style improvisation. He was educated at the Liszt Academy in Budapest and Oberlin Conservatory in the United States, and he earned his master's and doctoral degrees at Yale School of Music. His career has taken him across Europe and the United States, and he has performed at major festivals, such as the International Bach Festival in Leipzig, the Boston Early Music Festival, and the Magadino International Organ Festival in Switzerland. He has played many historic instruments, including J.S. Bach's organ at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, the organ played by Dietrich Buxtehude at the Marienkirche in Lübeck, and Gottfried Silbermann's organ at Freiburg Cathedral. As a composer, Karosi has written music for orchestra, chamber ensembles, choir, voice, and organ, and received commissions for works from the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Hungarian State Opera, and the National Concert Hall in Budapest. Karosi has also taught organ and organ improvisation at Boston University, Oberlin, and Yale.

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.

L'Ensemble Aglàia, nato a Milano nel 1992 su iniziativa di Cinzia Barbagelata e Jorge Alberto Guerrero, è un gruppo specializzato nell'interpretazione del repertorio barocco e preclassico su strumenti originali. L'ensemble, che si avvale di alcuni tra i più stimati esecutori italiani di musica antica, si presenta in formazioni variabili, dal trio all'orchestra da camera. Tra le formazioni di punta vi è senz'altro il quartetto d'archi, organico sul cui repertorio, dalla nascita del genere al periodo Classico, il Quartetto Aglàia svolge una approfondita attività di ricerca, con numerose proposte inedite.

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.

After several decades of debate, it is now firmly established that The Art of Fugue was composed for harpsichord. The notation on four staves could lead to confusion and wrongly suggest that the work was intended for an ensemble of four instruments. But this scheme of notation for a keyboard instrument was not uncommon in the past (e.g. it was used by the Italian Girolamo Frescobaldi in his Fiori Musicali), as it facilitates the visualization and grasp of each individual voice's progression and beauty.

The Italian pianist Filippo Gorini took advantage of the world health crisis to immerse himself in The Art of Fugue, Johann Sebastian Bach’s unfinished mystical masterpiece: ‘The view that it should be seen solely as a theoretical marvel is misguided: as the counterpoints and canons evolve in formal complexity, so does their emotional tension, until the heartbreaking mystery of the unfinished Fuga XIV’, says the young pianist, winner of a Borletti-Buitoni Trust prize in 2020, whose first two albums for Alpha have been very well received (Diapason d’Or, 5 Stars in BBC Music Magazine etc.).