151: New Album! (& New Sonic Experience?)

Volume 6 in ‘J.S. Bach: Complete Keyboard Works’ is on presale today! Here are the relevant links:

* J.S. Bach: Complete Keyboard Works, Vol. 6 - Arrangements of Albinoni and Reincken(https://modernclassicalx.lnk.to/JSBachCompleteKeyboardWorksVol6FromArrangementsofAlbinoniandReincken)

I might call this volume a ‘headphones album’ or perhaps one to listen to in the car: The sonic space shifts throughout the course of these pieces. I describe this process in depth in the episode, but essentially each track is two recordings of the piece, playing simultaneously: one recording is the original live performance, while another is that very same performance, played back through the Disklavier with the dynamics flatlined— as if the piano keyboard were incapable of dynamics — like a harpsichord. The two recordings were then ‘live panned’ during the mixing according to my feeling for the music. The result, while perhaps less extreme than this all sounds, is certainly a noticeable phenomenon, especially in headphones or seated between two speakers as in a car. But enough about that, let’s get to the music.

Fugue it:

Reincken, one of the two composers Bach arranges on this album, is mentioned in Bach’s obituary:

During this time, about the year 1722, he made a journey to Hamburg and was heard for more than two hours on the fine organ of St. Catherine’s before the Magistrate and many other distinguished persons of the town, to their general astonishment. The aged Organist of this Church, Johann Adam Reinken, who at that time was nearly a hundred years old, listened to him with particular pleasure. Bach, at the request of those present, performed extempore the chorale ‘An Wasserflüssen Babylon’ at great length (for almost half an hour) and in different ways, just as the better organists of Hamburg in the past had been used to do at the Saturday vespers. Particularly on this, Reinken made Bach the following compliment: “I thought that this art was dead, but I see that in you it still lives.” This verdict of Reinken’s was the more unexpected since he himself had set the same chorale, many years before, in the manner described above; and this fact, as also that otherwise he had always been somewhat inclined to be envious, was not unknown to our Bach. Reinken thereupon pressed him to visit him and showed him much courtesy.

Reinken was only in his late seventies— not a hundred— when he and Bach met, but he had already been an important part of Bach’s early development. Around 1714 Bach made arrangements of string chamber music by Tomaso Albinoni (1671-1751) and Johann Adam Reinken (1643-1722.) Where Bach’s concerto arrangements BWVs 972-987 for harpsichord, and BWVs 592-597 for organ, maintain the general structures and forms of the originals, Bach’s Reincken and Albinoni music is arranged with much more freedom, especially in the fugues, where Bach often doubles, if not triples, the length of the original models.

The full track listing to the forthcoming album, on presale today, available October 23:

1: Fugue in A major, BWV 950 (on a theme by Albinoni)

2. Sonata in C major, BWV 966 (after Reincken): I. Praeludium 3. Sonata in C major, BWV 966: II. Fuga4. Sonata in C major, BWV 966: III. Adagio – Allegro5. Sonata in C major, BWV 966: IV. Allemande

6. Fugue in C major, BWV 946 (on a theme by Albinoni)

7. Sonata in A minor, BWV 965 (after Reincken): I. Adagio8. Sonata in A minor, BWV 965: II. Fuga9. Sonata in A minor, BWV 965: III. Adagio – Presto10. Sonata in A minor, BWV 965: IV. Allemande11. Sonata in A minor, BWV 965: V. Courante12. S