Luminaria: Stefano Vasselli, Organ

Stefano Vasselli, Organ

Johann Sebastian Bach
Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C Major BWV 564
Chorale – Partita “Sei gegrüßet, Jesu gütig” BWV 768
Pièce d’orgue BWV 575
Passacaglia and Thema Fugatum BWV 582

A program entirely dedicated to a single composer always poses particular difficulties, however, the organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach, and the very variety of his compositions easily supports a monographic concert. The choice fell on four pieces written in different eras, the result of the evolution of Bach’s thought which, with its unmistakable personality, was able to make the stylistic influences of other musical schools its own. The program opens with the Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C Major, a tripartite piece in the manner of the instrumental concert. The toccata opens with large virtuosic cadences for both the manual and the pedal, and then gives way to an elegant and light-filled contrapuntal writing. The Toccata is followed by an Adagio in A minor, the cantability of which immediately brings to mind the Italian style of Vivaldi and Corelli. After a polyphonic passage with rich and sonorous harmonies, the fugue begins, based on a theme in 6/8 with a dancing and joyful character and developed lightly, without resorting to overly erudite contrapuntal devices. The 11 Partitas (= variations) on the chorale “Sei gegrüßet, Jesu gütig”, were probably written in 1706 in Lüneburg, by a Johann Sebastian in his early twenties. Although simple in structure, they show a depth of expression that is already mature and full of nuances, further underlined by the refined timbral research that differentiates each variation. The “pièce d’orgue” as the title says, is a particular piece, of French taste, that the young Bach (about twenty-five years old) wrote during his years of training and exploration of the musical taste of his contemporaries. A short toccata page (très vitement) and an equally short chromatic coda (lentement) frame a grandiose “tutti” (gravement) of the organ, solemn and majestic, in the French manner of the “grand plein jeux” of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Finally, the Passacaglia is one of those pieces that Bach seems to have written more for himself than for some contingent occasion: the composition is generally dated between 1706 and 1713, and its first instrumental destination is the harpsichord with pedal. It is a series of 21 variations on a solemn dance theme in 3/4 time. The variations seem to arise from each other more as a continuous development rather than a play of writing or timbres. At the end of the variations, a grandiose double fugue further elaborates the material until the piece concludes with understated grandeur. Over the centuries, the passacaglia has found its performance space on the organ, sometimes enduring excessive timbral or interpretative elaborations, due, in any case, to the extreme richness of musical and, we could say, spiritual contents, contents to which no subsequent composer is could have remained insensitive. To entice you, here is a (not short) recording of “Sei gegrüßet, Jesu gütig” taken from a concert a few years ago…