J. S. Bach - M. Reger: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565

                                           Aria from the Suite No. 3 in D Major 

 

Max Reger, an excellent composer himself, wrote: “Sebastian Bach is for me the beginning and end of all music; upon him rests, and from him originates, all real progress!" Reger adapted many of Bach's works into more than one version (solo piano, piano duet, 2 pianos). His many editions of Bach's keyboard works have fallen out of favor because of their extraordinary and very personal additions to Bach's original texts.

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E. Grieg: Holberg suite op. 40

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The Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) goes back in time in a fantastic way with this suite. He masterfully creates an old-style suite, complete with everything such a work should have been in the seventeenth century: prelude, gavotte, sarabande, musette, and air. For example, the content of one of Grieg's most popular works did not have national, Norwegian, but Baroque influences. Grieg wrote the work in 1884 in memory of the Norwegian writer Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754), creator of comedies and innovator of Danish and Norwegian literature.

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J.S. Bach - G. Kurtag: Sonatina 'Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit'

                                            Trio Sonata No. 1 in E-flat Major - 1ste deel

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One of the most appreciated composers of the past half century G. Kurtag himself is fascinated by music by J.S. Bach. He made language-rich adaptations for 4- and 6-handy pianos and for 2 pianos and often performed them together with his wife.

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I. Stravinsky: Pulcinella Suite (selectie)

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How strange Stravinsky's 'Pulcinella' must have sounded in 1920 - charming, witty, disarmingly simple eighteenth-century music by the man who had shaken Paris with the fierce modernism of The Rite of Spring just seven years earlier. But Pulcinella was also radical in its own way: Stravinsky seemed to say that the music of the future may learn from the lessons of the distant past. Pulcinella is usually mentioned as the first music of neoclassicism. "'Pulcinella' was my discovery of the past," said the composer - "the revelation that enabled all my late work."