A concert with music by Bach and Chopin? The religious mathematician and the dreamy romantic? These two great musicians are commonly thought as poles apart. This concert will lead us to hear them otherwise. 

To start with, Chopin idolized Bach. He had a lot of traits that are common with Bach: structural precision and “classical” perfection, expressive harmony, keyboard mastery and universality. However, and above all, both Chopin and Bach had “emotion” at the heart of their compositions, resulting from their respective profoundly melodic lines. What about counterpoint, a practice that Bach is best known for, a practice where several melodic lines or voices would be performed together developing as a narrative? Chopin did not use that form of counterpoint. Yet, his compositions often consisted of several musical narratives, unfolding melodies, developing harmonies with emotional flow.

The three Bach compositions come from his two books: 

The Well-Tempered Clavier. Bach wrote these major works (called the pianist’s Bible), to vindicate the new “well-tempered tuning” used in Western music since then. Each book consisted of 24 pairs, a prelude followed by a fugue:  12 pairs for each major and 12 for each minor key. Preludes are lyrical free form compositions where a phrase would be repeated and varied. A fugue has a “subject” that is introduced in one voice and then followed by a repeat of that subject by other voices. As each new voice enters, the previous voice would express a contrapuntal melody till all voices enter. Development sections followed by repeated entries of the subject then alternate. A development section is then followed by a repeat of the main subject.

Out of the rich world of Chopin’s genres, Billy has selected the unique Prelude op. 45, a sort of an uninterrupted improvisation, the 3 Nouvelles Études, his 4th and last Ballade and one of his last sets of 3 Mazurkas. Mazurkas are a homage to his beloved Poland and are based on dances having distinctive rhythmic patterns and big variety of sometimes nostalgic, sometimes lively, folk-inspired melodies.

Program

Bach (1685 - 1750) and Chopin (1810 - 1849)

Bach

Prelude and Fugue in E major (Book II, Well-Tempered Clavier)

Chopin

Prelude in c sharp minor, op. 45

Bach

Prelude and Fugue in F sharp major (Book I)

Chopin

Three Mazurkas, op. 56

1. in B major

2. in C major

3. in c minor

Intermission

Chopin

Trois Nouvelles Études

1. in f minor

2. in A flat major

3. in D flat major

Bach

Prelude and Fugue in b flat minor (Book I)

Chopin

Ballade No 4 in f minor, op. 52

Tickets available at Antoine Ticketing

Proceeds will support International College Scholarships