Bach & Italy Vol. 5: Solos for Strings

Description

Bach’s Solos for strings (the violin Sonatas and Partitas and the cello Suites) represent unequalled challenges in the history of music and of the repertoire for string instruments. Though not unique in their treatment of “melodic” instruments in a harmonic and polyphonic perspective, and without harmonic support, they represent an unrivalled summit of instrumental technique, musical concept and inventiveness. However, precisely for these reasons, they gained widespread acceptance in the concert repertoire only very slowly, and numerous adaptations (such as, for example, added accompaniments) attempted to tame their seeming unplayability. That Bach pushed the boundary of what a violin or a cello can do to previously unimaginable levels is undisputable; that the violin or cello are incapable of adequately rendering his musical ideas is now abundantly disproved, but was a commonly shared belief in the nineteenth century.
Busoni, for example, believed that the Chaconne found at the end of the Second Violin Partita displayed an “organistic” concept; therefore, his arrangement for the piano interprets Bach’s violin scoring through the lens of an imaginary organ version. Whilst Brahms’ version for the left hand alone (see “Bach & Italy 1”) does not share this view, Busoni’s example was abundantly imitated in the following years.
This volume 5 of “Bach & Italy” offers an overview of how Bach’s works for solo violin and cello were interpreted as piano pieces in nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century Italy.
Alfonso Rendano was a Calabrese pianist and composer, who lived for many years in Naples, one of the most “Bachian” cities in the late nineteenth century. He had studied with Sigismund Thalberg, through whom the Bach cult had gained many enthusiasts in Italy. He shared with some of his contemporaries an “educational” view of the concert musician’s role, and proposed many thematic recitals, including performances of twenty-two Preludes and Fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier. As is well known, its Preludes had inspired those by Chopin, who had taught Mathias, another of Rendano’s former teachers. Rendano took two preludes excerpted from Bach’s Cello Suites and transformed them in Chopinesque Nocturnes. Whilst his choice may seem disconcerting in the ears of today’s audience, in fact it is interesting and perceptive. He demonstrates Bach’s influence on Chopin by adding melodies in the style of Chopin over the Suites’ musical text, played by the left hand. In this way, the melodic component of Bach’s Preludes is downplayed, as they are reduced to harmonic accompaniments to the right hand’s tune: when I had to define my interpretation of these works, I initially tended to imitate the cellists’ interpretation of these works, but later realized that I had to consider Rendano’s pieces as new works, inspired by Bach but with an entirely new content. Only thus did the beauty of these pieces emerge.
After a deep disagreement with the Directorship of the Conservatory of Naples, where he used to teach, Rendano founded a musical school of his own, in which he invited, as a faculty member, Alessandro Longo, another leading figure of the Italian Bach cult. Longo edited a series of volumes called Biblioteca d’oro (“Golden Library”) intended primarily – but not exclusively – for amateurs. Slightly surprisingly, the seventh volume of the series is entirely devoted to Bach and Handel: the surprising aspect is that those two composers (and particularly Bach) were normally considered as “sublime” musicians, “serious” artist, and pedagogically fundamental elements of a musician’s education. Bach was rarely seen as a musician for amusement, and yet this is precisely how Longo treated his works in the Biblioteca d’oro. Here, the pieces excerpted from the cello Suites are genuinely enjoyable, and the Andante from the violin Sonata is a beautiful cantabile with intense sweetness. Those who are familiar with Bach’s original works will sometimes be surprised by Longo’s interventions on the text: sometimes he deliberately changes some important elements of Bach’s writing with no discernible reason (this happens, for example, with the Bourrée from BWV 1010). Whilst I corrected the obvious printing errors in the scores I was performing, I decided to respect Longo’s choices even when I could not find any reason – except artistic liberty – behind them.
A similarly easygoing approach is found in Luca Fumagalli’s version of the Gavotte after Bach’s BWV 1012. He belonged in a family of pianists, with his three brothers who were acclaimed concert musicians. His version is brilliant, clearly conceived for concert performance, and builds a virtuoso and thundering conclusion. Here, however, humour and irony are not missing, thus bearing witness to a parallel tradition of considering Bach as an entertaining and amusing composer.
The concept behind Fumagalli’s Gavotte is found also in the other Gavotte included in this CD, excerpted from an original work for the keyboard (the third English Suite). Giuseppe Piccioli, its transcriber, was one of the most famous and influential editors of Bach’s works in the repertoire of Italian instructive editions, particularly in a pedagogical perspective; and the second and third English Suites were compulsory works at the first Conservatory exam for pianists from the 1930s to 1999. Evidently, Piccioli wished to transform a piece with which all Italian pianists would be very familiar into something new: this Gavotte I becomes a rather majestic and powerful work, whilst the Musette (Gavotte II) is turned into a rarefied, enchanted and very mysterious piece.
Similarly, the living composer Fabrizio Puglisi decided to transform another extremely famous piece – one constantly used as a first approach to Bach’s music, even though it is not actually Bach’s – into an entirely new work. His version of the G-minor Minuet, a piece found in all collections of “Bach for children” slowly acquires unmistakably jazzy features, and is also reminiscent of Alfred Schnittke’s Suite in the Old Style.
With Fiorentino and Fels we go back to Naples, but in more recent times. Sergio Fiorentino was one of the greatest Italian pianists of the twentieth century, thanks to his prodigious technique but, more importantly, to his exquisite musicianship. He transcribed the entire Sonata BWV 1001 for solo violin, and his version has an extraordinary beauty. Different from other transcribers encountered in this album, his version could easily be mistaken for an original keyboard work by Bach, since its style is not that of late-Romantic pianism. Interestingly, the magnificent Fugue from this Sonata had been transcribed for the organ by Bach himself, and, even more interestingly, Busoni cited it in his self-defense when countering the reproaches that had been advanced against his version of the Chaconne. If Bach – so was his argument – had transcribed one of his solo violin pieces for the organ, then why could not the Chaconne be considered as an “organ” piece?
However, Fiorentino’s version seems not to be inspired by Bach’s own transcription of the Fugue, and it fills the polyphonic texture in a very imaginative fashion. The concluding Presto could be compared with the two versions realized by Brahms, who called them “Etudes” just as he did with his own version of the Chaconne; here too the original part is complemented with an equally demanding counterpoint, played here by the left hand.
By way of contrast, Eugenio Fels – a living Neapolitan pianist and composer, who had studied with Fiorentino – seems to consider the Sarabande of Bach’s Partita BWV 1002 as a Chorale-like piece. His version proceeds by thick chordal textures, whose severity is attenuated by the frequent arpeggiations; still, the dance reveals its religious and organistic potential, just as had happened with the Air from Bach’s Goldberg Variations in Busoni’s version of the “da capo” (see “Bach & Italy 1”). In between the two performances of the Sarabande, Fels proposes a beautiful version of Bach’s Double, in which the Sarabande’s tune is implicitly remembered. In Fels’ version, however, it is heard as a polyphonic voice: this “revelation” increases the resemblance of the entire composition to a Chorale work, as it demonstrates the similarity between the original text of Bach’s Double and the Chorale Jesus bleibet meine Freude. The Bourrée, by way of contrast, is akin to Fumagalli’s Gavotte, and shows once more how many of Bach’s dance movements are marked by lightness and gracefulness.
Whilst the version of the magnificent Largo of BWV 1005 realized by Angelo Boschian, another living composer, is extremely sober and merely brings to light the implied harmony of Bach’s original, the Sarabande by Fiorentino is an enigmatic piece. It was found among Fiorentino’s papers after his death, bearing the title “Sarabande by Bach – Transcribed by S. Fiorentino”. Still, in spite of prolonged research, I have been unable to identify Bach’s original work. Discussing this beautiful piece with the musician who found it, he suggested that it might be a musical joke, which would correspond to Fiorentino’s sense of humour. It may be, in other words, a “fake Bach”. If this is the case, however, it is a superbly crafted fake, and one which sounds beautifully, in my opinion. Certainly it deserves to be heard and played as a testimony of Bach’s reception in Italy and of the inspiration he provided to Italian composers in the centuries.
The programme of this album does not exhaust the repertoire written by Italian musicians after Bach’s string solos, and I aim to realize another compilation with other versions (including, of course, Busoni’s Chaconne which can be already enjoyed as part of “Bach & Italy 6”, featuring the complete Bach-Busoni repertoire). However, though incomplete, this album offers an intriguing perspective on the various reactions of Italian musicians to Bach’s works, and on how they were inspired by them.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2024