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Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in B-flat Minor, BWV 891: Stratospheric Stretto

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Epic is a word that could describe Bach’s Prelude and Fugue No. 22 in B-flat Minor, BWV 891. The companion pieces come near the end of Book II of the Well-Tempered Clavier, the manuscript of which is dated between 1739 and 1742 in the final years of the composer’s life. From the Prelude’s opening bars, a dense contrapuntal conversation unfolds. At moments, the imitative voices resemble a fugue. The real fugue arrives with …

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Debussy’s “Les collines d’Anacapri”: A Sunny Mediterranean Postcard

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Claude Debussy’s twenty four Préludes for solo piano, composed between 1909 and 1913, are atmospheric snapshots. Each opens up an enticing new vista which draws us in with the immediacy and sensuality of the most vivid impressionistic painting.  Les collines d’Anacapri (“The Hills of Anacapri”), the fifth prelude from Book 1, was inspired by the Mediterranean scenery surrounding the town of Anacapri on the island of Capri. Debussy visited this location in the …

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Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in G Minor, BWV 885: Double Invertible Counterpoint

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Reflecting on the work of his father, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach wrote, If ever a composer has shown polyphony in all its strength, it was surely Bach…. Nobody has shown as much as he, in works which normally seem so dry, as much imagination and originality of thought…. His melodies were indeed unusual, but they were always varied, rich in invention, and they are not at all like those of other composers. …

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Dvořák’s Humoresque in G-flat Major: Ignaz Friedman and Art Tatum

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Antonín Dvořák was one of the greatest composers of melody. Perhaps the most catchy and popularly enduring example is the Humoresque No. 7 in G-flat Major (Poco lento e grazioso), originally written for solo piano. Propelled forward by an infectious, lilting rhythm, the melody develops in two-note steps which ascend gradually and explore a variety of motivic combinations before sinking into repose at the end of the phrase. As with much of …

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Chopin’s Mazurka in A Minor Op. 17, No 4: Evgeny Kissin

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Frédéric Chopin’s Mazurka in A minor, Op. 17, No. 4 inhabits the ephemeral world of dreams. Emerging out of silence, the opening bars are hazy and harmonically ambiguous. They contain a rising three-note cell which searches for the “right” note and soon spins into a melody. It is music which seems to be composing itself in realtime. Traditionally, the mazurka is a lively Polish folk dance in triple meter, with strong accents …

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Remembering Menahem Pressler

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Menahem Pressler, the pianist and founding member of the Beaux Arts Trio, passed away on May 6. He was 99. Born in Magdeburg, Germany, the 14-year-old Pressler hid from Nazi thugs who vandalized the shop owned by his Jewish parents during the Kristallnacht. In 1939, the family fled and emigrated, first to Israel and then to the United States. In 1946, Pressler won first prize at the Debussy International Piano Competition in San …

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Bartók’s Allegro Barbaro: Zoltán Kocsis 

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In 1908, the young Béla Bartók, along with his compatriot, Zoltán Kodály, traveled to remote corners of the Hungarian countryside to document the peasant folk music of the Magyars. This is the ethnic group which occupied the region between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains between the eighth and fifth centuries B.C. before migrating west to form present-day Hungary. The colorful inflections of this music, as well as the jagged, irregular …

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