Eric Lewis playing The Art of the Fugue with the Manhattan String Quartet and the New York Woodwind Quintet, Part 2

It is fitting that at the end of their lives, Johann Sebastian Bach (recently blind) and Ludwig van Beethoven (long since deaf) composed fugues that transcend the scope of ordinary senses. Intellectual and emotional, earthy and cosmic, humanistic and divine- these seminal works- The Art of the Fugue (1750) and the Grosse Fugue (1826) have challenged perhaps more than any other art works before or since the nature of man's relationship with the universe.In this profound arrangement of the Art of the Fugue by flautist Samuel Baron, recorded live in concert in 1985 by the Manhattan String Quartet and the New York Woodwind Quintet, one can almost hear the two masters communicating across time. For his part, Beethoven revered Bach- once remarking, "Nicht Bach! Meer sollte er heissen (Not Bach (a brook)! Sea should have been his name." Indeed, this rich, warm, and sonorous interpretation is nothing short of oceanic. Far from the staid, pedantic renditions one often hears, this is music that is unabashed in its humanistic yearning, questioning, and emotionality. As the first violinist of the Manhattan Quartet Eric Lewis writes in the liner notes, "Sharing the work with listeners felt like an act of intense telepathic longing. Bach’s music is in his intensely great musical works, like The Art of the Fugue, created to nurture a humane bond at the core of Bach’s theology of universal love. We looked to nurturing and even helping to form the “musical soul” of the audience through the performance, giving play to a constant empathetic and creative imagination taking place in a paradoxical sphere of “not knowing”. In this extraordinary recording, one feels deeply this telepathy, as well as the profound humanity that underlies it.On a personal note, I was deeply privileged to have had Mr Lewis as my primary violin teacher growing up. A legendary chamber musician for over half a century, his recordings of the complete Shostakovich Quartets with the Manhattan Quartet are to my mind definitive and without peer. What is striking to me about this Bach recording is how starkly the values of Mr Lewis' teaching- generosity, compassion, warmth, playfulness, empathy- are encoded into the fabric of his music making. As such, this recording serves as a tribute to Mr Lewis' own 'musical soul'- the legacy of which I hope will move and inspire another generation of music lovers as it has so profoundly with me.-David Strom 2016

This live recording of J. S. Bach’s Art of Fugue (Kunst der Fuge) is one of the very best ways to explore this masterpiece of counterpoint. The arrangement is by Samuel Baron of the New York Woodwind Quintet, for a nonet consisting of string quartet and woodwind quintet. The recording is of the Manhattan String Quartet and New York Woodwind Quintet in their prime, in 1985 (this is the MSQ of the pioneering and award-winning recordings of the complete quartets of Shostakovich, the first American string quartet to tour the former Soviet Union during the early stirrings of glasnost). The chamber music transcription preserves the individuality of the voices, which is lost in the various orchestral versions, but with the variety of available colors (including artful doublings), it sets in relief the interplay of the four lines. In the opening Contrapunctus, we hear the quartet alone, and in subsequent fugues and canons many of the myriad of possible combinations of instruments are heard from, including a framing penultimate fugue by inversion for the winds alone. The structure of the ultimate fugue, which heartbreakingly breaks off just after the statement of the fourth subject, on the name BACH, is beautifully delineated with the whole ensemble employed. Finally, in the chorale prelude on Vor deinen Thron, added as an ending in the posthumous publication of the work, the orchestration builds from a solo viola, through the quartet, to the full sonority of the ensemble in the chorale passages. The live performance captures the intense involvement the players have with this work, and is a fitting testament in particular to the life’s work of Sam Baron and of Eric Lewis, leaders of their respective ensembles, among the finest in American chamber music.David Clampitt, Professor and Area Head for Music Theory, Ohio State University