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Bach & Beyond, Part 3 / Jennifer Koh
Cedille

Bach & Beyond, Part 3 / Jennifer Koh

$9.99
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Details

Composer
BACH BERIO HARBISON
Artist
Jennifer Koh
Format
CD
Label
Cedille
Released
Nov 13, 2020
Catalog #
CDR 199
UPC
735131919920

About

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)

Tracklist 16 tracks

  1. Disc 1
  2. 1 I. Grave 04:13
    Track
    1
    Title
    I. Grave
    Duration
    04:13
    Composer
    Johann Sebastian Bach
    Performer
    Jennifer Koh
  3. 2 II. Fuga 07:59
    Track
    2
    Title
    II. Fuga
    Duration
    07:59
    Composer
    Johann Sebastian Bach
    Performer
    Jennifer Koh
  4. 3 III. Andante 06:00
    Track
    3
    Title
    III. Andante
    Duration
    06:00
    Composer
    Johann Sebastian Bach
    Performer
    Jennifer Koh
  5. 4 IV. Allegro 06:20
    Track
    4
    Title
    IV. Allegro
    Duration
    06:20
    Composer
    Johann Sebastian Bach
    Performer
    Jennifer Koh
  6. 5 Sequenza VIII 15:40
    Track
    5
    Title
    Sequenza VIII
    Duration
    15:40
    Composer
    Luciano Berio
    Performer
    Jennifer Koh
  7. Disc 2
  8. 1 I. Ground 03:40
    Track
    1
    Title
    I. Ground
    Duration
    03:40
    Composer
    John Harbison
    Performer
    Jennifer Koh
  9. 2 II. Dance 1 03:10
    Track
    2
    Title
    II. Dance 1
    Duration
    03:10
    Composer
    John Harbison
    Performer
    Jennifer Koh
  10. 3 III. Air 03:12
    Track
    3
    Title
    III. Air
    Duration
    03:12
    Composer
    John Harbison
    Performer
    Jennifer Koh
  11. 4 IV. March 02:32
    Track
    4
    Title
    IV. March
    Duration
    02:32
    Composer
    John Harbison
    Performer
    Jennifer Koh
  12. 5 V. Dance 2 04:14
    Track
    5
    Title
    V. Dance 2
    Duration
    04:14
    Composer
    John Harbison
    Performer
    Jennifer Koh
  13. 6 VI. Duet 01:59
    Track
    6
    Title
    VI. Duet
    Duration
    01:59
    Composer
    John Harbison
    Performer
    Jennifer Koh
  14. 7 VII. Epilogue 01:40
    Track
    7
    Title
    VII. Epilogue
    Duration
    01:40
    Composer
    John Harbison
    Performer
    Jennifer Koh
  15. 8 I. Adagio 05:25
    Track
    8
    Title
    I. Adagio
    Duration
    05:25
    Composer
    Johann Sebastian Bach
    Performer
    Jennifer Koh
  16. 9 II. Fugue 10:30
    Track
    9
    Title
    II. Fugue
    Duration
    10:30
    Composer
    Johann Sebastian Bach
    Performer
    Jennifer Koh
  17. 10 III. Largo 03:29
    Track
    10
    Title
    III. Largo
    Duration
    03:29
    Composer
    Johann Sebastian Bach
    Performer
    Jennifer Koh
  18. 11 IV. Allegro assai 05:02
    Track
    11
    Title
    IV. Allegro assai
    Duration
    05:02
    Composer
    Johann Sebastian Bach
    Performer
    Jennifer Koh