BACH
Art of Fugue
Berliner Bach Akademie/Heribert
Breuer
Recorded January 2000
ARTE NOVA CLASSICS 74321
74465 2 [Total playing time
70.49]
Crotchet
The Art of Fugue used to have a reputation as being a dry-as-dust academic
exercise which the great man set himself in old age. In fact it was regarded
as his last work because one of his sons, C. P. E. Bach, wrote on the manuscript
at a certain point 'Over this Fugue, where the name BACH is introduced into
the counter-subject, the composer died'. Well it may not have been true but
it makes for a good story if nothing else. Bach even used to be part of a
so-called Fugal Correspondence Society to which members submitted fugues
on an agreed theme, for example in 1747 he wrote canonic variations on the
chorale Von Himmel hoch, the next year came The Musical Offering,
and The Art of Fugue was intended for 1749, although he had begun
the exercise a full ten years earlier and added to it during the intervening
years.
Though conceived in keyboard terms, and progressing from the most basic fugues
to amazingly complex mirror fugues, the work (like many others by Bach rescored
by composers from Mozart to Brahms, Schoenberg to Jacques Loussier) is now
regarded as game for treatment in any amount of instrumental combinations
and groups. Heribert Breuer has opted for four quartets and a solo keyboard
instrument. At the start each group introduces itself in each of the four
so-called simple fugues, namely a string quartet for the first, a jazz
combination for the second of two pianos, vibraphone and double bass, a wind
quartet (oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon) for the third, and an antique
group of two each of recorders and gambas for the fourth. What then follows
is too complicated to describe here but is a combination of all instrumental
premutations as the counterpoint becomes more complex. Breuer took 25 years
to do it, so one can imagine the complexity of the result. It does make for
satisfying listening and serves to remind us just how amazing the Art
of Fugue is.
Christopher Fifield
Performance
Recording
http://www.click2classics.co.uk
