Bach's echo
In the last few centuries, Johann Sebastian Bach's echo has been heard everywhere, whether or not composers and musicians were aware of it or listeners recognised it. In our program "Bach's Echo" we play pieces which testify most clearly to Bach's lasting influence.
We start with a quartet by Bach’s son Johann Christian, who of course received an excellent musical education from his father.
The composer Georg Druschetzky, whose nine outstanding oboe quartets make him a key figure for our ensemble, gave the title "a musical working-out of the name of Bach" to the middle movement of the quartet programmed here (in German notation, B is B flat and H B natural).
We follow this with a series of movements showing the influence of Bach's counterpoint on the work of Mozart, ending with the ecstatic fugal finale of the latter’s quartet KV 387.
After the break, a twentieth-century echo can be heard: five pairs of the 24 preludes and fugues for piano which Dmitri Shostakovich wrote under the inspiration of his visit to the 1950 Leipzig Bach Festival and the performances there of the pianist Tatjana Nikolajeva, arranged for oboe and String Trio by our oboist Eduard Wesly.
We return to the source of this echo to close the programme with Bach's chorale "Before Thy throne".
W. A. Mozart
Largo and Fuga in F major
KV 404a/4
Adagio in D minor
KV404a/2
Molto Allegro
Finale from Quartet in G major
after KV 387
(arranged by Eduard Wesly)
D. Schostakowitsch
5 Präludien und Fugen aus op. 87
(eingerichtet von Eduard Wesly)