J.S. Bach - Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582 (1713) {Isolde Ahlgrimm}

Johann Sebastian Bach (31 March [O.S. 21 March] 1685 – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites and Brandenburg Concertos; keyboard works such as the Goldberg Variations, The Well-Tempered Clavier and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and vocal music such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Bach Revival, he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music. Please support my channels: Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582 (c. 1713) Isolde Ahlgrimm, 1941 Ammer pedal harpsichord. rec. 1957 Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor (BWV 582) is an organ (or pedal harpsichord) piece. Presumably composed early in Bach’s career, it is one of his most important and well-known works, and an important influence on 19th and 20th century passacaglias: Robert Schumann described the variations of the passacaglia as “intertwined so ingeniously that one can never cease to be amazed.“ The autograph manuscript of BWV 582 is currently considered lost; the work, as is typical for Bach’s and contemporary composers’ works, is known only through a number of copies. There is some evidence that the original was notated in organ tablature. It is not known precisely when Bach composed the work, but the available sources point to the period between 1706 and 1713. It is possible that BWV 582 was composed in Arnstadt soon after Bach’s return from Lübeck (where he may have studied Buxtehude’s ostinato works). solde Ahlgrimm (31 July 1914 in Vienna – 11 October 1995 in Vienna) was an Austrian harpsichordist and fortepianist. In 1975 she was awarded the Austrian Gold Medal. Together with her husband, instrument collector Erich Fiala (1911–78), Ahlgrimm played a central role in the revival of interest in the use of period instruments for the performance of Baroque and Classical music. Ahlgrimm and Fiala presented their long-running series of Concerte für Kenner und Liebhaber (“Concerts for connoisseurs and amateurs“) in Vienna between 1937 and 1956; this involved 74 different programs of music from the 16th to the 20th centuries, much of this repertoire receiving its first modern performance. She was the first to perform and record virtually the entire output of JS Bach for harpsichord. She performed The Bach Cycle in 12 programs in Vienna, 1949–50 and 1952–53. Before some 600 subscribers at the preconcert lectures for four of the programs in the first Bach Cycle, Ahlgrimm was the first harpsichordist to argue the case for performing Bach’s last work, The Art of Fugue, in its original form as a keyboard work, an idea also adopted at that time by her younger colleague, Gustav Leonhardt (born 1928). She performed the work for the first time in 1952 and recorded it a year later as Volume 9 of her JS Bach series. From 1937, Ahlgrimm was the first fortepianist in Europe to use original Viennese instruments in the performance of the music of W. A. Mozart. In 1951, she presented the entire solo output of Mozart in a series of nine concerts (The Mozart Cycle), on original fortepianos by Michael Rosenberger (1790) and Anton Walter (1787). She gave the first performance of Bach’s The Musical Offering in its original form, (recorded with Nikolaus Harnoncourt in 1955). With Erich Fiala, she prepared the first recordings of the Bach harpsichord concertos using original string instruments of the baroque era (drawn from Fiala’s extensive collection), tuned to low pitch (c. A = 417) and strung in gut. The ensemble—led by Rudolf Baumgartner and including Nikolaus and Alice Harnoncourt alongside other leading Viennese musicians—was named the Amati Orchestra, since all of the string instruments they used had been made by either members of the Amati dynasty or their students. Ahlgrimm was a close friend of the German composer Richard Strauss and performed a 79th birthday concert for him in Vienna’s Konzerthaus (Mozart-Saal) in 1943. Strauss composed a concert-ending to a suite of dances from his last opera, Capriccio (1942), arranged by Ahlgrimm for solo harpsichord at Strauss’s suggestion. The Capriccio Suite was first performed by Ahlgrimm in 1946 and was later published by Edition Schott. Ahlgrimm joined the teaching staff of the Vienna Academy (later known as University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna) in 1945; remaining there until 1958 when she joined the faculty of the Mozarteum University of Salzburg. She left that institution in 1962 to rejoin the faculty at the Vienna Academy where she was appointed reader in 1969 and professor in 1975. She retired from teaching in 1984. She served on the juries of many European harpsichord competitions, including those at Bruges, Rome, Geneva and Leipzig.