DESCRIPTION:
Fuga (Ricercata) a 6 voci for orchestra (arr. from Bach's Musical Offering), (1935)

London Symphony Orchestra
Pierre Boulez

Intellectually rigorous and relentlessly contrapuntal describes the music of both Webern and J. S. Bach. Webern's orchestration of the six-voice fugue from the Musical Offering is a re-interpretation of Bach's masterpiece, one which is concerned with the work's detail, with its building blocks. Scored for flute, oboe, English horn, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, French horn, trumpet, trombone, timpani, harp, and full strings, Bach's fugue, as musicologist Susan Bradshaw notes, is "re-heard through Webern's ears." Webern's meticulous reconstruction of Bach's piece focus on intervallic relationships, and with the minutiae of Bach's counterpoint. Significant rhythms and motives are isolated and emphasized through colour, with Bach's long melodic lines being broken up and divided between the different instruments in the orchestra. Webern transforms a Baroque work into a pointillistic, modern piece, one that exemplifies the notion of "Klangfarbenmelodie," or tone colour melody as the fugue becomes a coterie of soloists. For Webern, Bach's fugue was simply an "abstract design," and as such it was susceptible to a modern reinterpretation. [allmusic.com]

Art by Howard Hodgkin