Cover of the recording being discussed
The first recording sessions that violinist Jennifer Koh made for her Bach & Beyond project for Cedille Records took place in November of 2011. As can probably be guessed, the “Bach” portion of the project involved recording the six compositions that Johann Sebastian Bach wrote for unaccompanied violin, three four-movement sonatas and three partitas, based almost entirely on dance forms. The “Beyond” portion involved three albums, each of which began and ended with a Bach composition framing works composed in the twentieth century or later. The last of those three albums was originally scheduled for release this past September, but that release was delayed until approximately a month ago.
On this final release the “frame” is provided by two sonatas, BWV 1003 in A minor at the beginning and BWV 1005 in C major for the conclusion. Within that “frame” Koh performs one of the most significant and challenging pieces to be composed for solo violin during the twentieth century, the seventh piece in Luciano Berio’s Sequenza series. This is followed by the world premiere recording of John Harbison’s “For Violin Alone,” which he composed for Koh in 2019 under a commission from the 92nd Street Y.
Between 1958 and 2002 Berio wrote fourteen Sequenza compositions, each for a different “instrument” (scare quotes because the third of these was written for female voice). The pieces are best known for exploring new sonorities, often requiring the performer to master certain extended techniques. Berio himself likened his violin piece to the Ciaccona that concludes Bach’s BWV 1004 partita in D minor; but the “ground” for his chaconne involves only two notes (selected, perhaps playfully, as A and B).
I have been fortunate enough to see this work in performance several times. On all of those occasions the violinist set up a row of music stands so that the entire score was spread out horizontally. (I have never experienced the piece being performed without the score.) What was particularly interesting about this approach is that, by observing the performer, one could determine how far the performance had progressed from beginning to end. This has led me conjecture that each of these pieces amounts to a “sequence” of episodes whose architecture has more to do with each episode exploring different sonorities rather than the development of any overarching framework. On the basis of that conjecture, I would note that experiencing the piece is as visual as it is auditory, meaning that listening to a recorded performance may put the listener at an undue disadvantage.
Harbison’s piece, on the other hand, is likely to strike most listeners as a reflection on the multi-movement partita structure that figured so prominently in the Bach catalog. In that context the listener to this recording may approach the piece as a “partita spacer” between the two sonatas, consistent with the Bach publication in which the sonatas and partitas alternate. That said, I have to confess that I am still getting my ears around Harbison’s score, so to speak; but I definitely look forward to forming a better acquaintance with the music!
As far as the Bach selections are concerned, I have always found the fugues in the second movements of the sonatas to end up as my primary focus of attention. What particularly interests me is how the durations of those fugues get longer from one sonata to the text. On Koh’s recordings the BWV 1001 fugue has a duration of five minutes and eighteen seconds. BWV 1003 extends that duration to one second short of eight minutes. The final fugue then leads the pack with a duration of ten and one-half minutes. Of course we all know that Bach was a prolific composer of fugues for many different instruments (and vocal ensembles); but in these three sonatas it also seems as if he is playing with how “the art of fuguing” can extend to lengthier durations as one acquires greater mastery of the compositional technique.
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