ALEXEY KRUGLOV - IGOR GOLDENDERG – BACH GAMES

ArtBeat Music, 2024
[classical]

The album "Bach Games" reflects a certain milestone, the path that Igor and I have traveled, working on the interweaving of academic music and improvisation. In the treasury of unique masterpieces of world classics, the artistic heritage of Johann Sebastian Bach stands out, being a landmark that musicians at all times look at with special awe, trying to equal the amazing genius-born beauty and depth - not just one of the main representatives of the Baroque era - one of greatest composers in the history of music. Bach's works are filled with stunning images and contain enormous potential for the refraction of his ideas in other areas, in particular, in improvisation. By the way, while studying the solos of another genius, the founder of the bebop style, saxophonist Charlie Parker, I noticed that the musical material of his improvisations is very similar to Bach’s scores - the same singing, playing, sequence and movement of the melodic line, harmonic diversity within the solo and even - alterations.

The above parallels cannot but inspire our own dialogues with Bach in order to reach the deep meanings of his music, the transcendental symbolism of the artistic basis of the manifested great composer. On the one hand, Igor and I are returning to the canons and principles of the Baroque, when composers improvised within their own pieces, in particular, Bach himself was an excellent improviser. But at the same time, in our appeal to the Baroque there is a movement forward, in the unknown two consequences have yet given influence - classics and jazz, erasing the boundaries between them, and perhaps the creation of a new area... Like chess players operating pieces, looking at them from the side, we keep our distance in relation to the sounding images, trying to direct them towards syncretism, searching for an imperceptible neutral zone between two forms - the rigor of musical material and improvisation, which is expressed in our project even in the technology of performance - we are looking for the average, the common features between the manifestations in academic music and jazz in terms of sound, articulation, solo, presentation, manner of performance, we find the balance between duality and swing.

As part of my theatrical craft and under the influence of my theater teachers, the outstanding Boris Yukhananov and Igor Yatsko, I at one time studied the principles of play theater. And I found in it much that was close to improvisational music, in the way it exists in the artistic field of the work. Play theater is a mystery theater, where the word has a special meaning, and the play structure itself ends with a meeting with the truth (or lack of meeting with it). In this regard, the gaming component not only contributes to our search with Igor for a joint inter-genre space, but also determines the goal of the musical action - through Pushkin’s “Demon”, sounding in Prelude in E-Flat Minor - to the final “Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ” ... Sound chess on a board of polyphony, mirroring and dualism, the path of self-denial, the search for oneself and truth invisibly, inexplicably surrounds our program, captivating us with the ideas of the great Johann Sebastian Bach!

1. Goldberg Variation No. 1 (from The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988) 04:17
2. Prelude No. 2 in C Minor (from The Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 847) 05:12
3. Minuet in G Major (from Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, BWV Anh. 114) 03:23
4. Prelude No. 8 in E-Flat Minor (from The Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 853) 07:12
5. Joke (based on Badinerie from Orchestral Suite no. 2 in B Minor, BWV 1067) 03:29
6. B-A-C-H (based on the monogram of Johann Sebastian Bach) 02:51
7. Musette in D Major (from Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, BWV Anh. 126) 05:45
8. Choral Prelude «Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ» (BWV 639) 04:50

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