Take a four-letter name and a musical theme in four notes: B.A.C.H. Leave it to the deliberation of
three of the greatest figures of Romanticism and Post-romanticism: Schumann, Liszt and Reger.
The first two, Schumann and Liszt, and later the third, Reger, studied it at length, playing it on the piano and the organ, with their friend Mendelssohn as conductor.
They accurately assessed its immense value. They questioned it, meditated, on it, assimilated, imagined and dreamt it. They gave it the highest possible place, but nevertheless wanted to measure up to Bach’s legacy and show what they themselves were capable of. Bach, their musical Father, gave birth to giants! When they pay him a legitimate tribute, they do not plagiarize him, they harness all the strength and originality of their own individuality and their own style, drawing on the resources of their time. They became intoxicated with the four letters and grew wings of their own. They created modern masterpieces, in which the spirit of Bach lives on.
Franz Liszt
B.A.C.H. (B flat, A, C, B) are four notes that call for intensive chromaticism, which suits Franz Liszt perfectly. Here as elsewhere he draws his conclusions and boldly renews the writing. The notes are like four planets gravitating in the sky of his philosophical and religious quest; a motif powered like the four electrons of an atom, rotating in a vertiginous movement which echoes back through time to the stylus fantasticus that Bach himself (in the Fantasy and Fugue in G minor) had inherited from Frescobaldi and Buxtehude.
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann wrote in one of his love letters to his future wife Clara: « There will be a dream-like darkness in our house, there will be flowers in the windows… You will love the Bach in me”. In his Advice to Young Musicians, he says: « Play frequently the fugues of good masters, especially those by Bach » and: « Don’t forget that you have thought nothing, discovered nothing that others have not thought or discovered before you; and even if you have really done so, consider it as a gift from Heaven that you must share with all » and again: « Perhaps genius alone understands genius. »
Of course, it is in the solo piano and the lieder that Schumann is at his best. However, wiser and less modernist, less reckless than Liszt but ambitious in a different way, he shows that in the middle of the nineteenth century the example of the author of The Art of Fugue is still a fertile one. He engages in a demanding contrapuntal exercise, austere perhaps, but clearly not devoid of sensitivity. Greatness is in asceticism, but the music sings. As with Reger later, the intense contrapuntal work, the skillful but expressive layering of the voices, the duration and continuity of the discourse – verticality and horizontality –create a gigantic world.
Max Reger
Max Reger attempts to create a synthesis of Brahms and Liszt, enlivened by Bach’s counterpoint, since fugue comes naturally to him as a means of expression. Like Brahms, Wagner and Bruckner, he immerses us in a world from which we can only grow and emerge astonished, enriched and changed. But for this to happen, we must accept taking our place for some time amidst the titanic excesses of a plethoric discourse.
The Riga Cathedral organ *
Such unique works require an equally exceptional instrument. The fact that Liszt wrote his “Nun danket alle Gott” for the inauguration of the Riga organ in 1884 is hardly enough to justify choosing it. Quite simply, this instrument miraculously combines the required qualities: mystery, variety of timbres, fine and poetic colors in the piano register, grandeur and majesty of the forte, but without a trace of aggressivity. Most precious of all is the perfect “audibility” of this combination. Clearly, since the pieces on this recording are particularly contrapuntal in nature (thanks to Bach!), it is essential not to lose any of the often complex, dense layering of the different voices. Here, both the voicing, the harmonization of the instrument and the acoustics of the cathedral make it possible to really hear everything. It is rare to find such a wealth of detail within a romantic work of such gigantic proportions.
Edouard Oganessian’s interpretation
Bach, the Father, the teacher, the inspirer, the beacon, stimulates and invigorates composers as well as their performers. Edouard Oganessian’s approach is nourished by the careful reading of the original scores. It also has the power to give the listener the impression that the work is being created right now for their own ears. There are already so many versions of Liszt’s magnificent tribute to Bach! Paradoxically, the weight of habit and tradition means that such an innovative work now seems too often to have become routine and unsurprising. Oganessian’s vision, honest and matured over time, gives an impression of freshness, self-evident and truthful. Let us dedicate to him this thought from Franz Liszt: « The intimate light of our conscience is our best certainty – let us humbly follow it. »
Gabriel Marghieri
Organist of the Sacré-Coeur de Montmartre in Paris
Professor of analysis and improvisation at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Lyon
Composer
English version by Evgeny Rivkin, Professor at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music, UGA and Ian Noble.
Edouard-Oganessian.blog 