A busy schedule as music director of the Bach Collegium Japan and sought-after guest conductor doesn’t stop Masaaki Suzuki from returning to his first loves, the organ and the harpsichord. With the present release he adds yet another chapter to his series of Bach’s works for solo harpsichord. After acclaimed recordings of the Well-tempered Clavier, the Goldberg variations, the French Suites and other works the turn has come to the English Suites. Composed while Bach was in his thirties it precedes other sets such as the French Suites and the Toccatas, and in his liner notes, Bach scholar Yo Tomita draws attention to 'the stylistic traits of a youthful and ambitious composer wanting to make his mark through the use of counterpoint and virtuosity'. Despite its title, the collection has very little to do with England, at least musically: the six suites are instead rooted in the French tradition, and show certain striking similarities to the composer Charles Dieupart’s Six Suites pour le Clavessin from 1701. (Bach made a copy of Dieupart's set sometime between 1709 and 1716.) It was only in the 19th century that the suites became known as the 'English', based on a never substantiated claim that the set was commissioned by an English nobleman.

Transcribing musical works for other instruments or instrumentations has a long tradition in music history. Sometimes, the composers themselves wrote different versions of their works and often it is the musicians who adapt works for their own instruments. Even great composers have enjoyed arranging the works of their predecessors and have thus transported them into their time and era of music history and lent their own interpretations to them. Among those are Sergei Rachmaninoff, Franz Liszt, and Ignaz Friedman - all three great pianists and composers. Renowned Russian pianist Zlata Chochieva presents their transcriptions of the works of great composers such as Bach, Mendelssohn and Mahler on her new album "(re)creations".

In 2019, when Alexandre Kantorow, at the age of 22, became the first French pianist to win the Gold Medal at the Tchaikovsky competition, his program included no less than three works by Johannes Brahms. Two of these, Piano Sonata No. 2 and the Rhapsody in B minor, he went on to record for release on his previous, highly praised recital disc, which was awarded distinctions such as Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice, Diapason d’Or, and Choc de Classica. The Brahms interpretations won Kantorow particular praise – the Guardian (UK) described them as ‘magisterial’ while the website ResMusica placed his sonata ‘among the great reference recordings of the piece – if not the modern one.’ There is much to look forward to, then, when Kantorow releases an all-Brahms album with a playing time of no less than 85 minutes.

He opens with music by a composer of a similar age as himself: Brahms wrote the Four Ballades in 1854 while only 21 years old, taking up a fashionable genre introduced by Chopin as late as 1840. The set is followed by the even earlier Sonata No. 3 in E minor which forms the center of the program. The sonata is of almost symphonic dimensions and it was indeed, along with its predecessors, famously described as a disguised symphony by no one less than Robert Schumann. To bring this stormy, impassioned album to a close, Kantorow has chosen a later, and contrasting work: With a lifelong admiration for Bach, Brahms in 1879 made a piano arrangement, for the left hand alone, of the iconic Chaconne from Partita No. 2 for solo violin – a composition that Brahms himself described as ‘a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful impressions’.

REVIEW:

When he made this recording in 2020, Kantorow was just a couple years older than the 20-year-old Brahms who composed the Piano Sonata No. 3. He finds a youthful quality in the sonata and the Ballades that nobody else has quite touched on. Kantorow's Ballades are mysterious, with ghostly quiet passages and mighty climaxes -- again, not what one thinks of usually for Brahms, but again carefully constructed. Only in the Bach arrangement does Kantorow falter a bit. However, he takes chances, and this is all to the good. If one needed any more evidence that Kantorow is a young pianist to watch, it is here in abundance.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

In a historic first, critically acclaimed Guitarist Daniel Lippel brings these three beloved masterworks in their original keys to a classical guitar refretted in Baroque well temperament. They were written at & for the keyboard, where each key has its own unique Affekt. What a joy it is to finally hear them in all of their original key-colored glory. Composer/critic Kyle Gann has said, “Playing Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier in today's equal temperament is like exhibiting Rembrandt paintings with wax paper taped over them.” The same may well be said of Bach played on the modern equal tempered guitar. "Aufs Lautenwerk" is a co-release with John Schneider's Los Angeles based MicroFest Records and available in digital format through their catalogue.

REVIEW:

In his notes prefacing the recording, guitarist Daniel Lippel acknowledges the validity of many different approaches to Bach performance practice, and assures his listeners that his own approach, while certainly distinctive, is in no way meant to make a definitive argument–“after all,” he continues, “I am playing an instrument that didn’t exist when the music was written.”

The instrument in question is a guitar invented and built by German luthier Walter Vogt; its fingerboard (as you can see in the CD cover photo) consists of movable (sliding) frets, allowing each note to be adjusted to a very specific tuning, in this case a temperament devised during Bach’s time by one of the composer’s students, Johann Kirnberger. Unlike today’s system of equal temperament, Kirnberger’s “well-tempered” structure (this one known as Kirnberger III) adjusts certain intervals to allow all keys to be played “in tune” while celebrating each key’s distinctive “color”–thus, E-flat major will have a quality different from A major.

If you happened to first listen to this recording unaware of the above details, you may, as I did, notice something special about the sound of this guitar, about the character of the chords and melodic lines–a full-bodied, pleasing resonance, and an especially vibrant quality overall. Of course, much of this could just be due to the nature of the instrument itself, and to Daniel Lippel’s clear, even execution and particularly well-managed fingering technique. But no doubt the unique resonating properties of strings differently tuned to conform to key-specific relationships also is a significant factor–anyone who’s spent time tuning and re-tuning and playing various keyboard and/or plucked-string instruments will confirm this. Even singers in a cappella ensembles are very aware of these key differences.

I’m not sure how many guitarists would devote the effort to mastering the technique required to play on a fingerboard virtually remade and fraught with dozens of slight but potentially disorienting alterations, but Lippel has done it, and the whole experience for the listener is pure delight. Lippel treats these three Bach works–usually heard these days on guitar, but originally either for lute-harpsichord or lute or some other keyboard instrument–with a style that keeps melodic lines flowing yet allows some breathing room for expressive phrasing.

The difficulties of playing these works on the lute–or guitar–are notorious, but unless you’re a serious student of this repertoire, all you will notice here is how easy and natural Lippel makes everything sound. And speaking of sound, it couldn’t be better in its detail and in the way we are situated relative to the instrument–just the right distance to fully appreciate the marvelous tone, and to enjoy the satisfying few moments of a richly-resonant chord as it dies away.

– ClassicsToday.com (David Vernier)

This album pays homage to the guitar. While the casual listener may recognize many of these works as favorites from the guitar canon, the majority of the repertoire wasn’t originally written for the instrument.

Only the Sor and the Brouwer were originally guitar compositions. The other works started life in a different form, and stand testament to the strength and versatility of the guitar to not only play such a diverse range of repertoire, but to truly embrace it. With its polyphonic capabilities and roots in popular music around the world, the guitar is singularly capable of such a traverse of styles. This album is not, as the title may imply, a collection of the most beloved or greatest hits from the classical guitar repertoire, but instead a demonstration of the power and ability of the guitar to perform and assume ownership of such beloved repertoire.

New York-based Australian classical guitarist Rupert Boyd has been described by The Washington Post as “truly evocative”, by Gramophone as a “fine guitarist”, and by Classical Guitar Magazine as “a player who deserves to be heard”. He has performed across four continents, from New York’s Carnegie Hall, to festivals in Europe, China, India, Nepal, the Philippines, New Zealand and Australia. Active as both a soloist and chamber musician, Rupert Boyd regularly performs throughout the world in Boyd Meets Girl, with cellist Laura Metcalf, and as part of the Australian Guitar Duo with guitarist Jacob Cordover.

REVIEWS:

The sheer versatility of this instrument comes to the fore in a really eclectic selection, which traverses centuries of music from Bach to The Beatles in a sunny 60 minutes.

– BBC Music Magazine

Boyd is a very fine musician. His sense of line is beautifully showcased in Bach’s Suite, while his rhythmic acuity enlivens from the onset of Jobim’s Felicidade, performed here in Roland Dyens’s masterly arrangement. The final item, Boyd’s own technically assured arrangement of John Lennon’s ‘Julia’, makes for a quiet, slightly downbeat encore.

– Gramophone

There is no doubt about it: György Kurtag is the greatest composer of our time. And this is not only thanks to his music, intensely sharp and exciting, written out of a pure and austere interior necessity. His figure as a man and artist, as well as musician, his ability to be constantly aloof from any fashions or cultural trends, his total lack of any wanting to be (because those who are don’t need to want to be) endured in a simplicity equaled only by his intransigence and depth, all this endows him with an absolute ethical, human and musical superiority, a model for all to follow.

Hailed as an “epic traversal of solo violin repertoire” and a “monumental achievement” (Chicago Tribune), American violinist Jennifer Koh’s complete Bach & Beyond recordings, pairing J.S. Bach’s violin sonatas and partitas with 20th- and 21st-century works inspired by Bach’s groundbreaking masterpieces, are now available in a convenient, economical boxed set offering all three albums for the price of two. Bach & Beyond Part 1 features Koh’s “alluring performances” (The New York Times) of Bach’s Partitas Nos. 2 and 3, Eugène Ysaÿe’s Sonata No. 2, Kaija Saariaho’s Nocturne, and the world-premiere recording of Missy Mazzoli’s Dissolve, O My Heart, commissioned for Koh by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The Newark Star-Ledger cited the violinist’s “distinctive voice over a range of styles.” Toronto’s The Whole Note said of Bach & Beyond Part 2, “Koh, as always, is superb, her intelligence and interpretation always matching her outstanding technique” in Bach’s Sonata No. 1 and Partita No. 1, Bela Bartok’s Sonata for Solo Violin Sz. 117, BB 124, and Saariaho’s Frises. Koh’s Bach & Beyond Part 3 earned BBC Music Magazine’s and ClassicsToday.com’s highest ratings for performance and recording quality. The Strad admired Koh’s “eloquent, artful, yet unadorned playing” in Bach’s Sonatas Nos. 2 and 3, Luciano Berio’s Sequenza VIII, and the world-premiere recording of John Harbison’s For Violin Alone, written for Koh. AllMusic said, “Koh’s series is highly recommended to those in search of an experience that will reward repeated hearings.” Audiophile Audition called it a “remarkable three-disc effort, recommended to all with a good degree of urgency.”

Excerpts of reviews from previously released volumes included in this set:

Bach & Beyond, Part 1

Koh makes short work of the Bach pieces—not in a bad sense: she just nails these works with a confident technique and a free-flowing, un-mannered style that remains true to Bach yet reminds us that a modern violinist is at the helm. Although ostensibly “modern”, the works by Saariaho and Mazzoli still incorporate time-honored traditions of solo-violin writing and don’t stray into what some might call “experimental” territory. These are both very ingratiating and accessible works to anyone who appreciates interesting, involving, intelligently written new violin music.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10)

Bach & Beyond, Part 2

Koh’s Bach is amazing as usual–so fluid and delivered with such a sensitively nuanced, confident authority. A personality emerges: is it Koh? is it Bach? It’s either or both, but ultimately, who cares? This is exceptional Bach playing. Throughout, Koh is in command, from the dazzling explications of the Bartók Fuga and Presto movements, to the sometimes frighteningly audacious dynamic and timbral assertions of the Saariaho.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10)

American violinist Jennifer Koh’s Bach & Beyond Part 3 concludes her critically acclaimed series of recordings based on her groundbreaking, multi-season recital series of the same name that The New York Times has called “indispensable.” Koh, “a virtuoso with quirky and wonderful ideas” (San Francisco Chronicle), again pairs two of J.S. Bach’s landmark Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin with Bach-inspired 20th- and 21st-century works. On this series-finale album, Bach’s florid and fanciful Sonata No. 2 in A minor and Sonata No. 3 in C major, celebrated for its colossal Fuga movement, frame Luciano Berio’s expressive, chaconne-like Sequenza VIII and Pulitzer Prize winner John Harbison’s alluring For Violin Alone, a dance suite inspired by Bach’s partitas, written for Koh (a world-premiere recording).

REVIEW:

Jennifer Koh returns, with the third and final installment in her Bach & Beyond series. With Part 3, we have another two-disc program, framed by two Bach sonatas–No. 2 in A minor BWV 1003, and No. 3 in C major BWV 1005–and filled out by Luciano Berio’s 15-minute-plus Sequenza VIII and John Harbison’s For Violin Alone, composed in 2019 for Koh and here receiving its world-premiere recording. Koh’s Bach, as noted in my two previous reviews, is polished, passionate, and presented with requisite attention to notational detail, but also with a lived-in, well-thought-out sense of phrasing and melodic flow that arises from the score, from an understanding of the all-important harmonic underpinning–an approach practical and just a bit personal, but never with a hint of posturing.

For this series we especially appreciate how carefully and purposefully Koh has chosen her program partners. We’re not expecting direct stylistic similarity, of course–Bach joining hands with Berio and Harbison is not the point. Rather, what Koh is interested in is some manner of influence or inspiration, arising either in some indirect, complementary way from Bach (Harbison), or by means of a more symbolic, technically oriented tribute to the master’s revolutionary, matchless conceptions (Berio).

Berio’s focus is not Bach per se, but rather takes off, sets its trajectory, and develops its very specific “violinistic” gestures and effects from the well-laid platform of virtuoso solo-violin technique established by the German genius in his ground-breaking sonatas and partitas. There’s no direct reference to Bach, yet the liner notes reference Berio’s comments that this work “becomes inevitably a tribute to that musical apex that is the Ciaccona from J.S. Bach’s Partita in D minor where…past, present, and future violin techniques coexist.” Not surprisingly, this is not a sit-back-and-relax experience; it’s a sit forward and hear the not always “pretty” expressions and explorations of a modern composer putting an instrument through its paces.

Harbison’s For Violin Alone hews closer to solo-violin Bach, its six movements plus epilogue more suite than sonata, its structural elements and integral melodic and harmonic components providing the fertile material for often wide-ranging, albeit tonal, thematic exploration, single lines punctuated by pertinent double-stops that anchor the harmony. Koh is especially effective in the way she articulates these double-stop passages, notably one extended sequence at the end of “Ground”, and throughout Duet and Epilogue.

Ultimately, for me the takeaway from these programs is the ingenuity, the majesty, the audacity of Bach’s imagination and the un-improvable manner in which he realized it. Whatever comes after, by however accomplished a composer, owes a huge debt to Bach’s inimitable and totally original conceptualization and realization of the instrument’s technical and expressive capabilities. Throughout these first-rate performances, Koh takes her time, to the benefit of the music–no rushing, no gratuitous theatrics–and yet is fully capable of exploding into an energetic fury of bow and fingers that leaves you impressed with both the violin and Koh’s command of its unique voice and power.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10; David Hurwitz)

The cembalo-obbligato sonata reached its zenith in the middle decades of the eighteenth century; thought to date from the last fifteen years of J.S. Bach’s life, the composer was a pioneer of this compelling form, and for the soloistic role of the harpsichord in ensemble music. Critically acclaimed Amsterdam-based viola da gamba player Robert Smith joins with the celebrated Italian harpsichordist Francesco Corti to present a new recording of four prime examples of this genre, Bach’s three Sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord along with a sonata by his close contemporary Christopher Schaffrath. Completing the album is a new work by Robert Smith – based on Henry Purcell’s Dido’s Lament this innovative new work for the instrument absorbs broad influences from both the eighteenth century and the heavy-metal band Metallica.

Two cantatas written by Johann Sebastian Bach for Michaelmas in 1726 and 1728/29 respectively build the framework of this recording. They tell of the Archangel Michael‘s victory over Satan. At the center of the cantata “Es erhub sich ein Streit“ is the tenor aria “Bleibt, ihr Engel“ (Stay, ye angels), which gives this recording its name. Embedded in these two magnificent, dramatic works with timpani and trumpets are two more intimate cantatas that sing the song of peace. In the introductory Sinfonia and the two alto arias of “Gott soll allein mein Herze haben“, the organ is highlighted as a virtuoso solo instrument - perfect for the Hildebrandt organ in the Naumburg Wenceslas Church, which lends a special color to this recording. The final chorale contains a message that can also be found in the subsequent solo cantata “Friede sei mit Dir“ and can be regarded as a statement of the entire program: “So that we love one another from our hearts and remain with one mind in peace.”

REVIEW:

The Cantorey has four voices on each part, and it retains the rich, plummy sound of German choirs. However, the instruments have a considerably spikier texture that brings out Bach’s responses to the text. These are mostly solo cantatas, and your mileage may vary with the soloists, some of whom follow the early-music pruning of vibrato, while others do not.  Another attraction is the work of organist David Franke, playing the small and very distinctive organ at the Stadtkirche St. Wenzel in Naumburg, which has an almost ringing sound. In all, if you’re thinking this is just another Bach cantata recording, you would be wrong.

– AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)