Rudolf Serkin Plays Bach (sony Classical Masters)

Rudolf Serkin

Sony Classical proudly announces an uncommonly attractive new batch of reissues from the CBS/Sony and RCA Victor/BMG back catalogues. This latest installment of the popular series showcases the reissue of a path-breaking composer edition as well as recordings by some of the labels’ greatest artists of the last half-century. Rudolf Serkin is rightly revered for his powerful interpretations of the Austro-German Classical and Romantic piano repertoire, but he was also an outstanding Bach player. In the 1920s he began a decades-long partnership with the great German violinist-conductor Adolf Busch (his future father-in-law) that led to, among countless treasures, a classic set of the Brandenburg Concertos, recorded in London in 1935, and many performances of the Bach Violin Sonatas, including a live recording of No. 3 in E major, BWV 1016, made in Washington in 1943. That performance is now being reissued in a new Sony Classical release containing all of Serkin’s Bach for American Columbia. The new collection contains another famous recording of the Brandenburgs featuring Rudolf Serkin’s magnificent continuo playing on piano (and his son Peter playing harpsichord continuo in No. 6), made in 1965 at the Marlboro Festival in Vermont (founded by Adolf Busch), led by Alexander Schneider and conducted by Pablo Casals. There are also performances of Bach’s two Concertos for 3 Keyboards that Serkin recorded at Marlboro and Casals’s Prades Festival with pianist-colleagues Mieczyslaw Horszowski, Peter Serkin and Ruth Laredo; Serkin père playing solo works including the Chromatic Fantasy and Italian Concerto; and the 14 canons based on the Aria from the Goldberg Variations that was discovered in 1974 in Bach’s own copy of the printed works, with Serkin’s “concentrated, reflective, crystal-clear, and beautifully balanced performance” (Andrew Porter, writing in High Fidelity) of the Aria.CD 1Concerto for 3 Harpsichords, Strings and Continuo in D minor BWV 1063Ruth Laredo · Mieczysław Horszowski pianosConcerto for 3 Harpsichords, Strings and Continuo in C major BWV 1064Peter Serkin · Mieczysław Horszowski pianosMarlboro Festival Orchestra · Alexander Schneider conductor14 Canons on the First 8 Notes of the Aria from the Goldberg Variations BWV 1087Felix Galimir · Eugene Drucker · Isidore Cohen · Naoko TanakaYukiko Kamei · Lynn Horner · Roland Greutter · Gregory Fulkerson violinsPhilipp Naegele · Steven Ansell · Irene Serkin · Caroline Levine violasJohannes Goritzki · Timothy Eddy · Peter Rejto cellosMarc Marder double bass · Julia Bogorad fluteRudolph Vrbsky oboe · Michael Rosenberg english hornAlexander Heller · Christopher Millard bassoonsCD 2Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 in F major BWV 1046Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G major BWV 1049Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D major BWV 1050Marlboro Festival Orchestra · Pablo Casals conductor CD 3Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D minor BWV 903Italian Concerto in F major BWV 971Capriccio in B-flat major BWV 992Toccata in E minor BWV 914Sonata for Harpsichord and Violin No. 3 in E major BWV 1016Adolf Busch violin