Thieriot / Hamburg Chamber Players / Mardon - Chamber Music 1 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

This 'Triple Completion' of Johann Sebastian Bach's 'Art of Fugue', performed by the Salzburg Chamber Soloists under Christoph Schlüren for Aldilà Records, is a pioneering enterprise For the first time the final fugue is presented both in it's unfinished original form and in three completions, each of which hypothetically completes the composer's architectonic plan. The first album presents the eleven consecutive main fugues and the unfinished final fugue with the concluding chorale. The second album of this double set opens with the two four-part mirror fugues, and continues with five later composers joining Bach with the three 'completers' of the final fugues Donald Francis Tovey (1931), Karl Hermann Pillney (1937) and Kalevi Aho (2011); and with two fugues on the B-A-C-H theme by Robert Schumann (1845) and Reinhard Schwarz-Schiling (1985) that are used as connective interludes. The range of music that emerged directly from Bach's late work thus extends in this project from Romanticism via Expressionism to the present time. In the interest of a cantabile performance of the fugue style as an instrumental continuation of the classical vocal polyphony of the Renaissance and the early Baroque, the execution is entrusted exclusively to the color of the string instruments, in tempos derived from the tradition of the Musica sacra, predominantly solemn, and performed as choral-like as possible, for Bach, as Marpurg wrote in his fugue treatise in 1753, wished to observe Incha noble and melodious simplicityInch and Incha cantabile manner of playingInch in his 'Art of Fugue'.

The Hamburg-born Ferdinand Thieriot (1838-1919) not only shared a teacher - Eduard Marxsen - with Brahms; both composers use a very similar musical language, one which is richly melodic and effortlessly contrapuntal. The musicologist Wilhelm Altmann wrote that 'Thieriot's chamber music is without exception noble and pure. He writes with perfect command of form and expression' - as the works on this third Toccata Classics volume prove, in their exquisite balance of depth and beauty.

World premiere recordings are brought together on this new GENUIN album featuring works by the composer Christian Ridil Renowned musicians from the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, among others, play in formations ranging from brass quintet to flute and percussion to the exquisite combination of (chromatic) harmonica and harpsichord. The works of the Goethe University Frankfurt's former university music director are characterized by stylistic diversity, wit, charm, and virtuosity and yet bear Ridil's clear signature. Absolutely worth discovering!