Programs

J.S. Bach: Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, BWV 903

"The very idea of working out a major composition based largely on the chromatic scale, was an achievement which Bach repeated several times. One of the greatest tributes of subsequent composers was the use of the B-A-C-H motif, suggesting a chromatic phrase, B-flat, A, C, B in our current system. For example, it opened Vaughan Williams' Fourth Symphony of 1935, his most brazen and unsettling orchestral work shrewdly forecasting the difficult period the Brits would endure in a few years hence. No, Bach was not thinking about a world war, just the sonic possibilities available to him at a time when structure dominated, whether in music or church architecture. Mr. Kigawa did not approach the piece the way a Glenn Gould might have, but rather as a well formulated work of art, with all of the lovely ornamentation fully in place." - Barry L. Cohen, New Music Connoisseur