Johann Sebastian Bach: Preludes, Fantasias and Minuets Sandro Ivo Bartoli

• Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750): Präludium, Fuge und Allegro in E-Flat Major, BWV 998:
• 1 Bach: Präludium, Fuge und Allegro in E-Flat Major, BWV 998: I. Präludium 02:49
• 2 Bach: Präludium, Fuge und Allegro in E-Flat Major, BWV 998: II. Fuge 05:30
• 3 Bach: Präludium, Fuge und Allegro in E-Flat Major, BWV 998: III. Allegro 02:28
• 6 kleine Präludien, BWV 933:
• 4 Bach: 6 kleine Präludien, BWV 933: No. 1 in C Major 01:58
• 5 Bach: 6 kleine Präludien, BWV 934: No. 2 in C Minor 02:25
• 6 Bach: 6 kleine Präludien, BWV 935: No. 3 in D Minor 01:51
• 7 Bach: 6 kleine Präludien, BWV 936: No. 4 in D Major 02:13
• 8 Bach: 6 kleine Präludien, BWV 937: No. 5 in E Major 01:27
• 9 Bach: 6 kleine Präludien, BWV 938: No. 6 in E Minor 02:09
• Menuett in G Major:
• 10 Bach: Menuett in G Major, BWV 841 01:33
• 11 Bach: Menuett in G Minor, BWV 842 01:19
• 12 Bach: Menuett in G Major, BWV 843 02:31
• Fantasie in G Minor:
• 13 Bach: Fantasie in G Minor, BWV 917 03:18
• Präludium:
• 14 Bach: Präludium - Fantasie in A Minor, BWV 922 08:05
• 15 Bach: Präludium - Fantasie in C Minor, BWV 921 04:08
• 12 kleine Präludien:
• 16 Bach: 12 kleine Präludien, BWV 924: Prelude in C Major 01:24
• 17 Bach: 12 kleine Präludien, BWV 939: Prelude in C Major 00:41
• 18 Bach: 12 kleine Präludien, BWV 999: Prelude in C Minor 01:20
• 19 Bach: 12 kleine Präludien, BWV 925: Prelude in D Major 01:16
• 20 Bach: 12 kleine Präludien, BWV 926: Prelude in D Minor 01:08
• 21 Bach: 12 kleine Präludien, BWV 940: Prelude in D Minor 01:05
• 22 Bach: 12 kleine Präludien, BWV 941: Prelude in E Minor 00:45
• 23 Bach: 12 kleine Präludien, BWV 927: Prelude in F Major 00:38
• 24 Bach: 12 kleine Präludien, BWV 928: Prelude in F Major 01:34
• 25 Bach: 12 kleine Präludien, BWV 929: Prelude in G Minor 01:16
• 26 Bach: 12 kleine Präludien, BWV 930: Prelude in G Minor 02:10
• 27 Bach: 12 kleine Präludien, BWV 942: Prelude in A Minor 00:59
• 28 Bach: 12 kleine Präludien, BWV 924/a: Prelude in C Major 01:32
• Chromatische Fantasie und Fuge in D Minor, BWV 903:
• 29 Bach: Chromatische Fantasie und Fuge in D Minor, BWV 903: I. Fantasia 07:55
• 30 Bach: Chromatische Fantasie und Fuge in D Minor, BWV 903: II. Fuga 06:21
• Total Runtime 01:13:48

Info for Johann Sebastian Bach: Preludes, Fantasias and Minuets

Making records can be a tiresome affair – or it can be really simple. “I called Sandro early last year to ask him what he wanted to record as a follow-up to our Liszt recording”, Solaire’s director Dirk Fischer remembers, “And without flinching for a single second, he said: Bach.” This almost ‘mainstream’-choice was not what Fischer had expected from the unconventional Italian pianist. And yet, he was more than happy to see where it would lead them. And sure enough, the original idea quickly transformed into a unique proposition: To juxtapose some of Bach’s least known pieces – little preludes and minuets, many of which just barely scrape the one-minute mark – with two of his most monumental works for the keyboard: The Prelude, Fuge and Allegro and the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue.

“The reason for choosing these small pieces is simply that ever since I learned them as a little child, I’ve been in love with them“, Sandro Ivo Bartoli explains, “And from time to time, I played them for my own pleasure. I usually play very complex repertoire, lots of notes all the time. Going back to these little pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach gives me a chance to clear my head.” These works may seem unassuming, but his interpretative demand was as ambitious as ever: “If I was going to record Bach, I at least wanted to make sure that I did not sound like anybody else. I made a conscious effort of not imitating someone. Glenn Gould in particular, because he’s inimitable.”

There is a suspenseful tension in Bartoli’s take on the Little Preludes. To him, these pieces rank as among the composer’s most precious gifts, while he also believes that they were written, as he puts it, ‘at the drop of a hat’: “He certainly didn’t put much effort into them. I think Bach would have been quite nonchalant about these pieces. In fact, of the 18 preludes I recorded, only the six which are in the Wilhelm Friedemann book are in an order prescribed by him. The others can be found here and there. I don’t think they meant very much to him.” He reflects for a second, then laughs: “But they mean a lot to me.”

The contrast with the more lengthy selections on the album could hardly be more radical. Bartoli describes the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue as “almost an isolated example of a wandering kind of writing” and “possibly a written down improvisation … by a genius”. He learned to love it early in his life, having heard it for the first time on an organ in Pisa as a 15-year old. For the recording sessions, as a personal talisman, he took with him the score he had bought in Italy as a little child, the price still printed on it in Lire. As so many choices on this album – including using a beer crate for a chair – the idea was born as spontaneously as the music itself. Which befits the spirit of an album which, the complexity and challenges of its repertoire notwithstanding, was born from instinct – and from a spirit of joy and simplicity.

“Bartoli has endeavoured to explore these works in such profundity, giving a reading just as in a continuous unravelling and reaching the bare heart of each of them, bringing them back to a rank in which the dimensional aspect has nothing to do with the spatial minuteness of their interpretative bulk. And, at the end, we perceive a sense of liberation when he tackles the Chromatische Fantasie: With finally reaching a sense of horizontality, after so much verticality, is experiencing vertigo. Like in the final verse of Dante’s Inferno: “and thence we came forth to see again the stars”.” (MusicVoice)

Bartoli’s Bach represents the highest form of narrative art. His high ambitions fit his great imagination and his playing feels without boundaries due to the inherent ‘ad finitum’ quality it radiates – regardless of whether it is the simple ‘Menuet BWV 842’ or the great ‘Fantasia BWV 922’. The momentum is consistent, the presentation overwhelming, the persuasive force impressive. Bartoli’s playing is just incredibly beautiful, to be honest. The recording by Dirk Fischer is one of the best of its kind.” Opus Klassiek

Sandro Ivo Bartoli, piano

Sandro Ivo Bartoli
Heralded by the German press as «one of the most important musicians to have come out of Italy in the last three decades», Sandro Ivo Bartoli is a virtuoso pianist whose sumptuous playing has captivated audiences all over the world. A graduate of the Florence State Conservatory and the Royal Academy of Music in London, he collaborated privately with Russian piano legend Shura Cherkassky, who was instrumental in the beginning of his international career. In the early 1990s, with Cherkassky’s encouragement, Mr Bartoli began to rediscover the Italian piano literature of the early twentieth century, soon establishing a trend and becoming its leading interpreter world-wide. In addition to the concertos of Casella, Malipiero, Pizzetti and Petrassi, in 1995 he gave the first modern performance in the United States of Respighi’s Toccata for piano and orchestra in an historic concert that was broadcast by PBS in the series ‘Great Performances’. In Europe, he toured extensively with orchestras such as The Philharmonia, the Hallé, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the stockholm String ensembles and the Max- Bruch Philharmonie, working with conductors such as Peter Stangel, Nicolae Moldoveanu, Michele Carulli, Simon Wright, Vladimir Lande and Gianluigi Zampieri among others.

Mr Bartoli’s playing has been praised for the kaleidoscopic range of its tone colour and its breath-taking virtuosity, attributes that he brings also to the better known repertoire of the classical and romantic eras such as the concertos of Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Franck, Rachmaninov, Shostakovitch and Tchajkovskij. Notable solo appearances include concerts at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, at the Gasteig in Munich (where he performed alongside such giants as Martha Argerich and Rodion Shchedrin), and at the Festival d’Avignon, Brighton Festival, Grieg Festival in Bergen, and the GAMO Festival of contemporary music in Florence.

Recent engagements have included Rachmaninov’s Second Concerto in Dresden, Liszt’s Malédiction concerto in Munich, Chopin’s Second Concerto in Grosseto, Mozart’s ‘Jeunehomme’ Concerto in Milan, as well as appearances on Radio Nacional Clàsica Argentina, Radio Nacional Española, the Icelandic Radio, and Radio Muzical Romania in a huge active repertoire that has seen Mr Bartoli perform no less than ten piano concertos and over seven hours of solo music in the 2012-2013 season alone. His discography comprises the complete concertos of Gian Francesco Malipiero with the Radio Orchestra of Saarbrücken (CPO, winner of the Diapason d’Or 2008), works for piano and orchestra of Ottorino Respighi with the State Orchestra of Saxony (Brilliant Classics, 2011), the First Piano Concerto of Erik Lotichius with the Academic Symphony Orchestra of St. Petersburg (Navona, 2013), and solo albums devoted to the music of Alfredo Casella, Gian Francesco Malipiero, Percy Grainger, Frédéryk Chopin, Ferruccio Busoni, and ‘The Frescobaldi Legacy’ (Brilliant Classics, 5 de Diapason, 2013). In 2014, Brilliant Classics will release Mr Bartoli’s complete recording of the Bach-Busoni transcriptions. Mr Bartoli is the protagonist of two documentary films, ‘Mood Indigo’ (Nu Films, Amsterdam, 2013) and ‘Pianiste-Interpréte’ (Salto Films, Paris, 2014). For his outstanding work in the Arts, the City of Turin has awarded him the Gina Rosso Prize. He lives in his native Tuscany.

Booklet for Johann Sebastian Bach: Preludes, Fantasias and Minuets