July 21, 7:00pm First Presbyterian Church, Cedar Falls

(Re)-Inventions

Bach is known for writing two, three, and four part inventions for piano. What if you re-invent the invention as something else? Elena Kats-Chernin asks this question on our final program of the season.

“I have a reputation for acoustic, straight-ahead jazz, but what I listen to at home is fusion, funk, classical. The music I like participating in is open, heady. You listen to the bass parts in Bach, the Brandenburg concerto, they’re like bebop lines.” – Christian McBride

Bach has often been “re-invented,” even across genres. You can hear everything from direct adaptations, like an electric guitar version of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (seriously), or taking material from a Brandenburg Concert and improvising on it across a whole orchestra. The final concert of the 2023 season features both examples starting with a transcription of the famous Chaconne for violin solo. A Chaconne is a baroque form characterized by a slow tempo, its meters (triple), and its short bass line structure that repeats ad infinitum throughout the piece. On the surface it doesn’t seem that exciting. However, when in Bach’s hands it became “one of the greatest works of art in human history” (Joshua Bell). When Johannes Brahms (also on this concert) stumbled upon Bach’s “Chaconne” in 1877, he simply couldn’t believe his eyes. “On one stave, for a small instrument, the man [Bach] writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.”

Brahms follows Bach on this program with his String Sextet in B-flat Major, Op. 18. Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Brahms are all credited with the 19th century revival of Bach’s music. The second movement of the Op. 18 Sextet has a clear key relationship to Bach (d minor) and structural link to the baroque Chaconne with its strict theme and variations. Whether Brahms knew of Bach’s Chaconne in 1860 isn’t clear, but it is tantalizing to think so as, over a decade later, Brahms himself would transcribe Bach’s Chaconne into a version for piano left-hand.

Going more towards the modern re-working of Bach comes Re-inventions by Russian-Australian composer, Elena Kats-Chernin. This work picks six of Bach’s two-part inventions (works she studied as a child) and puts them through the looking glass. Originally for recorder and string quartet, tonight we are hearing a version for soprano saxophone and string quartet made by the composer. For those who know the work the pieces are based on the following:

  • No. 1 is based on the invention No. 8, in F major.
  • No. 2 is based on the invention No. 4, in D minor
  • No. 3 is based on the invention No. 13, in A minor
  • No. 4 is based on the invention No. 1, in C major
  • No. 5 is based on the invention
  • No. 6 in E major No. 6 is based on the invention No. 10 in G major

Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major concludes our 2023 season. Essentially a series of six job applications from Bach to the Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg in 1721 these concerto run the gamut of both instrumental combinations and emotions of the. human condition. The third concerto is one of three that is composed from strings and continuo and, from the view of character and emotion, it showcases how virtuosic pure joy can be. There are several striking qualities about the third concerto. For one, the strings are divided into three times three (3/3/3), something more common to contemporary music that the 18th century. The other is the striking lack of a slow movement. The middle Adagio of this concerto is one measure comprised of just two chords acting more as a breath before a plunge back into the word of the virtuosic. Lastly, there is a lack of a soloist in this concerto. Instead, concerto seems to indicate a high level of ensemble virtuosity, nine players not competing with each other but encouraging each other and sharing in the joy of musical camaraderie.

Program

  • Bach: Chaconne from Partita no. 2 in D Minor (arr. Rotaru)
  • Brahms: Sextet No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 18
  • Kats-Chernin: Re-Inventions for Saxophone and String Quartet
  • Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 3

Meet the Artists

  • Ann Bradfield, soprano saxophone
  • Julia Bullard, viola
  • Hunter Capoccioni, double bass
  • Yoo-Jung Chang, cello
  • Max Geissler, cello
  • Alan Henson, cello
  • Julie Fox Henson, violin
  • Joanna Mendoza, viola
  • Theo Ramsey, violin
  • Erik Rohde, violin