"The idea of this album came to us during the first Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020. Martina and I share a deep enthusiasm for new music and we are always eager to find the common roots of composers who have been a constant part of our development as musicians, going right back to our school years.

"What have Berio and Boulez in common with Bach? Firstly, polyphony. The Bach Sonatas, played here on piano and cello, are in fact 'Sonate a 3,' in which the use of different timbres and rhythms goes along with the Bach’s mastery of counterpoint and the sheer inventiveness of the musical motifs. We find that these elements of the composer’s creativity are also very present in the music of Berio and Boulez. In Berio’s Sequenza for cello, the exploration of the idea of polyphony on a monodic instrument, the variety of atmosphere and the pure technical virtuosity find their roots in Bach’s music. Boulez, with his Douze Notations for piano, pays a huge debt to the old German tradition of counterpoint, filtered through the twelve-tone system of Schönberg. Boulez clearly stated that he wanted to make fun of the Second Viennese School, and yet the character of each piece and the virtuosity of each tiny nuance recall Bach’s heritage, in particular his rhythmic precision and the effective way that the different ‘voices’ can be heard. These ideas have encouraged us to offer listeners some fascinating parallels between centuries which can seem so far from one another. We hope that re-building these bridges in our own time might help to maintain dialogues and echoes of the history of our common cultural patrimony." (Michele Gamba and Martina Rudic)

Thanks to this groundbreaking release from violinist Daniel Auner, advised and coached by musicologist Dagmar Glüxam, listeners can hear something new - and old! - in these cherished works. In consultation with one of the world's leading experts on the thinking about emotion in music that Bach and his contemporaries learned and used, Auner has brought the baroque principles of affect and rhetoric back to the fore in a series of moving interpretations.

Glüxam writes: "the first question that may arise in reaction to this new recording of the Sei Solo (BWV 1001–1006) for solo violin by Johann Sebastian Bach is whether it is justified; there are already numerous recordings of this work, why then another one? The answer can be found in [my] recently published book Aus der Seele muss man spielen...

"This recording by the Austrian violinist Daniel Auner is probably the first one made of an interpretation achieved thorough consistent application of the principles of affect theory and musical rhetoric. Why is the 'affect' so immensely important in 17th- and 18th-century music, and particularly in the Sei Solo? An affect (also called Affekt, Leydenschaft, passion, emotion, sentiment, etc.) is a term used to describe human emotions, and was undisputedly the foundation of musical thought in this time period. Every composer was obliged to musically encode, so to say, a spectrum of these emotions in their work." Bach was no exception, and here, Auner accesses this way of feeling once more.

Recipient of a 10/10 rating by Gramophone!

The touch and musicianship of the Hungarian pianist Klára Würtz is amply attested by a substantial catalogue of Brilliant Classics and Piano Classics albums stretching from Mozart to Bartók. Her latest recording turns to a pillar of the keyboard repertoire, the variation set composed by J.S. Bach in 1741 as the fourth and final volume of his compendious Clavier-Übung (Keyboard exercise) project.

Practical instruction, entertainment and profound expression went hand in hand for Bach: one artistic goal never obscured the others. However, few of his works attain all three goals with the sublime mastery of the Goldberg Variations. The prowess of the performer is tested and placed on show as much as the ingenuity of the creative imagination in Bach’s most comprehensive response to the variation genre. ‘Composed for connoisseurs, for the refreshment of their spirits’: the composer’s dedication and introduction makes the artistic intent of the Goldberg Variations plain. Every third variation in the series of 30 is a canon, following an ascending pattern. The variations that intervene between the canons are also arranged in a pattern, following an order of canon, genre piece (such as a minuet or gigue) and a more freely developed and ornate fantasia. The whole set is bookended by an aria in the style of a sarabande which already presents the theme in decorated form as a grave chaconne. The poised classicism of Klára Würtz’s pianism makes this new recording of the Goldbergs an album to be keenly anticipated by all pianophiles and lovers of Bach. She takes all the repeats, and plays with the full armory of the modern piano’s tonal capabilities.

First released in 2005, Julia Fischer’s multiple award-winning recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonatas & Partitas has proven to be an evergreen. In 2017, it was re-released as a lavish 3LP boxset, as well as a re-designed 2SACD edition. This legendary recording now returns in a more affordable Stereo version. This album is a RE-RELEASED VERSION of PTC5186095 (first released in 2005).

Bach’s remarkable Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin are revered for their boundless inventiveness, technical ingenuity and emotional depth. With their brilliant preludes, stately dances and complex four-part fugues, the demands on the performer are enormous – from rapid scale passages, double stopping and arpeggios, to the skill and concentration required to create the illusion of separately moving and interweaving voices. The set is full of surprises. Sonata No. 3 contains a colossal fugue of increasing complexity and difficulty (and at over 350 bars, one of his longest). Partita No. 3 is one of Bach’s sunniest works, with the virtuoso Prelude and the charming Gavotte being regularly performed as encore pieces. Most famous of all is the legendary Chaconne from Partita No. 2, a kaleidoscopic series of variations as deeply felt and cathartic as anything Bach wrote and an incontestable milestone in classical music.

Julia Fischer’s recording for PENTATONE was showered with praise upon its first release in 2005. “Classic accounts by Milstein and Grumiaux have been usurped by this extraordinarily gifted newcomer” enthused BBC Music Magazine. “Her mastery is beyond question,” affirmed Gramophone magazine “her ability to trace a smooth, even line a source of pleasure itself.” It also achieved the rare distinction of garnering three of France’s most prestigious awards: the Diapason d’Or from Diapason; the CHOC from Le Monde de la Musique; and the highest rating from Classica-Repertoire.