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JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
VÍKINGUR ÓL AFSSON
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
VÍKINGUR ÓL AFSSON
Prelude and Fughetta in G major
BWV 902
1
Prelude
3:26
2 Chorale Prelude
BWV 734
“Nun freut euch, lieben Christen g’mein”
Organ Sonata No.4 in E minor
BWV 528
5
2. Adagio
(Orig. Andante; transcr. by August Stradal)
5:27
Prelude and Fugue in D major
BWV 850
(Transcr. by Wilhelm Kempff)
*
1:51
Prelude and Fugue in E minor
BWV 855
(The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, No.5)
6
Prelude
1:03
7
Fugue
1:46
(The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, No.10)
3
Prelude
2:03
4
Fugue
1:17
2
8 Chorale Prelude
BWV 659
“Nun komm der Heiden Heiland”
Aria variata (alla maniera italiana)
in A minor
BWV 989
12
Aria
1:51
13
Variation 1
1:10
14
Variation 2
0:56
15
Variation 3
0:55
16
Variation 4
0:56
17
Variation 5
0:59
18
Variation 6
2:06
19
Variation 7
0:47
20
Variation 8
0:49
21
Variation 9
1:08
22
Variation 10
1:47
23
Aria da capo
1:19
24 Invention No.12 in A major
BWV 783
1:19
25 Sinfonia No.12 in A major
BWV 798
1:24
Partita No.3 for Violin Solo in E major
BWV 1006
26
3. Gavotte
Harpsichord Concerto in D minor
BWV 974
(After Alessandro Marcello’s Oboe Concerto)
30
1. Andante
2:17
31
2. Adagio
4:10
32
3. Presto
3:31
33 Chorale Prelude
BWV 639
“Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ”
(Transcr. by Ferruccio Busoni)
5:04
Prelude and Fugue in C minor
BWV 847
(The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, No.2)
9
Prelude
1:24
10
Fugue
1:38
“Widerstehe doch der Sünde”
BWV 54
11
Aria
(Transcr. by Sergei Rachmaninov)
2:48
Prelude and Fugue in E minor
BWV 855a
27
Prelude
(Transcr. by Ferruccio Busoni)
3:08
Fantasia and Fugue in A minor
BWV 904
34
Fantasia
3:55
35
Fugue
28 Sinfonia No.15 in B minor
BWV 801
1:19
29 Invention No.15 in B minor
BWV 786
1:12
5:14
(Transcr. by Víkingur Ólafsson)
**
4:26
(The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, No.10;
transcr. to B minor by Alexander Siloti)
3:00
3
“Bach is a free country”, a wise man said
to me a long time ago, when I was a young
piano student starting to look for my own
way in his music. These words have stayed
with me ever since. They have served as a
helpful reminder when I have found myself
secretly hoping for a nod of approval from
a small statue of Bach which I keep by the
piano – a plaster bust that looks like wisdom
incarnate, stern-faced and majestic in
its wig. Needless to say, the statue never
budges. And that is as it should be, because
my real conviction is this: I believe Bach’s
music is greater than any individual, any
generation, any school of thought. Indeed,
Bach’s music is greater than Bach himself.
When you open a score of Bach’s music,
a paradox immediately reveals itself: the
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HCAB NO SNOITCELFER
REFLECTIONS ON BACH
By Víkingur Ólafsson
music is incredibly rich and strikingly sparse
at the same time. The musical structures
are very detailed, but there are hardly
any indications as to
how
you should go
about shaping them in performance.
Every element is up for debate: tempi,
dynamics, proportions, articulation – the
list goes on. We performers must weigh
our knowledge of period style against our
individual and inescapably contemporary
sensibility; our faithfulness to what we
believe to have been the composer’s
intention against our freedom to discover
possibilities in the music that the composer
could never have foreseen – some of them
made available by the modern instrument.
There is no single, correct solution. This is
a strangely liberating realisation: with one
of the greatest creators in music history,
it is simply unavoidable for the aspiring
performer not to become something of a
co-creator. For this reason, I love to hear
how other people perform Bach’s works. It
seems to reveal in a particularly clear way
how they listen to and think about music –
not just Bach’s music, but all music.
Bach, Our Contemporary
Through its inherent openness, Bach’s
keyboard music has become something of
a musical mirror for different generations
of pianists in the modern age, clearly
reflecting the tastes and values of each
period. While some works go in and out
of vogue, others enjoy a stable popularity
but undergo radical changes in the way
they are understood and interpreted. Bach
today generally sounds quite different
from Bach 30 years ago, and still more
different from Bach 50 years ago. In that
sense his music is contemporary rather
than classical. It has the potential to feel
more or less as new today as it did 300
years ago.
I have been drawn to very different schools
of Bach performance at various stages in my
life and have told myself more than once and
more than twice that
this
is how one should
play his music. I was 13 when I discovered
Edwin Fischer’s recordings from the 1930s
and something clicked within me. What
had previously seemed abstract became
sensual and poetic. Soon thereafter I got
to know Rosalyn Tureck’s recordings from
the 1950s and, fascinated by her extremely
pure counterpoint, naively decided that
Fischer had after all been over the top in his
expression (I was wrong). Then I discovered
Dinu Lipatti’s serene Bach and that became
my new ideal, before Glenn Gould took
over my life for a year or two. Even though
I often saw things differently from Gould, I
felt his unique approach taught me to listen
to music in a completely new way. I heard
Martha Argerich’s Bach album from 1980
and it opened my eyes to further dimensions.
And so on. Each of these approaches has
its merits, its special beauty. And, even if
Bach were alive today, his interpretation
wouldn’t be
the
truth either. Great art always
transcends the artist.
A Kaleidoscopic View
I have always had a tendency to think
of Bach mostly in the colossal sense, as
the architect behind glorious cathedrals
of sound no less impressive than their
counterparts of stone, wood and stained
glass. It is easy to forget that the man
behind the
St Matthew Passion
and the
Goldberg Variations
also excelled at
telling great stories in just a minute or two
of music. In the smaller keyboard works,
various facets of Bach’s complex character
are on display. These works reveal his
sense of humour, his rhetorical flair and
penchant for provocation, in addition
to his philosophical depth and spiritual
exaltation. They display emotions ranging
from mischievous lightheartedness to grief,
rage and exasperation. Through them, we
encounter not only Bach the composer,
but also Bach the keyboard virtuoso, Bach
the master of improvisation, and Bach the
meticulous teacher. Some of the works on
this album could be called études – Bach
wrote his Inventions and Sinfonias for his
students, and the preludes and fugues of
The Well-Tempered Clavier
were written
to test not only the limits of the instrument
in its newly improved temperament, but
the virtuosity of its performers. Like the
best of
études,
these compositions are also
autonomous and delightful works of art,
poems or short stories. This is why I love
presenting them independently, rather than
as parts of the large sets of works to which
they belong.
The Ultimate Teacher
Bach was not just a teacher to his own
students. Throughout music history,
discovering and studying the works of
Bach for oneself has been an unofficial rite
of passage for composers from Mozart to
Mendelssohn, from Chopin to Stravinsky.
For present-day music students, composers
and performers, I think the same applies:
for so many, there comes a time when
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