Fugue

2CD set "The Art of Fugue" is the long-anticipated 4th volume in Richard Troeger's ground breaking, world premiere series of Bach performed on the clavichord, exclusively from the Lyrichord Early Music Series. This edition features the complete Art of the Fugue, along with stunning violin transcriptions, and fantasias, including the thrilling "Chromatic Fantasia" and "Fugue." The first three volumes garnered raves reviews both here and abroad.

The fugue of the mature Baroque was the final flowering of Renaissance and Baroque polyphony. While most composers of Bach's generation had turned to other musical forms, Bach himself continued to write in "older" styles, and was to become the unchallenged master of the fugue. Die Kunst der Fuge was written during the last years of his life, and was being prepared for publication at the time of his death.

Even though Angela Hewitt's repertoire is quite extensive and diverse, encompassing the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and modern eras, her true specialty is the music of J.S. Bach, which she has recorded almost exclusively for Hyperion since the 1980s. With this recording of The Art of Fugue, Hewitt completes her long-running series of piano renditions of the solo keyboard works, and while not everyone is convinced that Bach composed this study of fugal techniques for the keyboard, Hewitt's performance is credible and satisfying. She controls the often unwieldy counterpoint by regarding the lines as if they were vocal parts, and her phrases are shaped by natural breathing points, as well as the different emotional qualities she brings to each fugue and canon. The Art of Fugue can be daunting for both performer and listener because its persistent tonality of D minor and monothematic material can be quite tedious in the wrong hands.

Now here’s a challenge: to take the fugue, possibly the most complex compositional procedure in Western classical music, and to transform it to reflect the modern age. The ‘New Piano Trio’ - violinist Florian Willeitner, cellist Ivan Turkalj and pianist Alexander Wienand – has taken this task to heart. Rather than being in any way daunted by the towering achievements of the baroque period, these three classically trained and extremely open-minded musicians have risen to the occasion, and achieved a fine balance between the rigour of the art of fugue and the freedom of jazz in their album ‘What the Fugue’.