255. Summing it Up

The Concert - Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Works by Bach and Brahms performed by the Borromeo String Quartet and Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute on August 7, 2016 and April 10, 2016.

• Bach: Preludes and Fugues from Well-Tempered Klavier Book 1 arr. Nicholas Kitchen: F Major, F Minor, B-flat Minor
• Brahms: String Quintet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 111

Both of the works on our podcast this week have a sort of finality, a sense of summing things up, or making a statement that is somehow comprehensive, and that’s saying a lot given the composers in question: Johannes Brahms and Johann Sebastian Bach.

We begin with a novel setting of a familiar work: a selection of preludes and fugues from Bach’s Well-Tempered Klavier, arranged for string quartet by Nicholas Kitchen of the Borromeo Quartet, who we’ll hear playing on the recording. The Well-Tempered Klavier consists of 24 small pieces, one prelude and one fugue in each key, ascending chromatically from C to B.

Then, we’ll hear a piece that Brahms apparently intended to be his last: the String Quintet in G Major, Opus 111. Brahms lovers may already be raising an eyebrow at that last statement, because this was not, in fact, the last piece Brahms wrote—he went on to publish another 11 works, much to the delight of the clarinetists, pianists, and singers who regularly perform these final few works today.