Maestro: Independent Classical Spotlight

December 2009
S	M	T	W	T	F	S

		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31

Thu, 6 November 2008

Maestro 006 feat. Johann Sebastian Bach, Lara St. John, & Trevor Pinnick

Maestro Classical podcast - episode 006: Johann Sebastian Bach feat. Lara St. John & Trevor Pinnick

Johann Sebastian Bach: (from Wikipedia.org)
(31 March 1685 – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and organist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity. Although he introduced no new forms, he enriched the prevailing German style with a robust contrapuntal technique, an unrivalled control of harmonic and motivic organisation in composition for diverse musical forces, and the adaptation of rhythms and textures from abroad, particularly Italy and France.

Lara St. John "Bach: The Six Sonatas & Partitas for Violin Solo" (Ancalagon)

ALBUM NOTES
Sei Solo a Violino senza Basso accompagnato
  (Six Solos for Violin without accompanying Bass)
  Completed: Cöthen, 1720

  According to the date he inscribed on the title page of the manuscript, Johann Sebastian Bach completed his Six Solos for Violin without accompanying Bass sometime in 1720. On 21 March of that year, he turned 35. Already a father of four, for the past two and a half years Bach had been harpsichordist and director of the elite chamber orchestra at the court of the Prince of Cöthen. Bach reportedly "dearly loved" his employer, the young Prince Leopold (1694-1728), who was not only a committed music-lover but himself a keen amateur performer, and even occasionally a composer, who, according to Bach, "loved and understood" the art. And, as one of Leopold's best-paid court functionaries, Bach was highly valued in return. In May of that year, when the prince set out for his annual summer "rest cure" in the Bohemian spa town of Carlsbad (Karlovy Vary), his harpsichordist Bach, went with him, along with five other leading members of the court band. Away from his home, young family, and usual court responsibilities for almost two months at a time, Bach evidently made good compositional use of such relatively carefree summers as that of 1720, as he did of his time at Cöthen. In the space of less than six years residence at the court (from December 1717 to May 1723), Bach rolled out a dazzling stream of masterpieces across a no less amazing range of instrumental genres. The six Brandenburg Concerti (BWV 1046-1051), the crème of his new orchestral compositions for the Cöthen band, were finished in fair copy on 24 March 1721. The first volume of the Well-Tempered Clavier (BWV 846-869) was probably largely completed during 1722. The parallel sets of 15 Inventions (BWV 772-786) and 15 Sinfonias (BWV 787-801) date, like the violin Solos, from the very middle of his Cöthen stay, flanked in the years on either side, respectively, by the six English Suites (BWV 806-811) and six French Suites (BWV 812-817). From Cöthen, too, came the only other set of instrumental pieces that challenges the violin Solos on the grounds of sheer oddity: the Six Suites for Solo Cello (BWV 1007-1012), likewise scored without accompanying Bass.

1.

Lara St. John
"Partita No. 1 in B minor BWV 1002 (Corrente/Double)" (mp3)
from "Bach: The Six Sonatas & Partitas for Violin Solo"
(Ancalagon LLC)