New Album: Spira, Spera - Breathe, Hope
Spira, Spera - Breathe, Hope - Out 26.03.2021
This album is very close to my heart and pays tribute to Bach and his legacy. Spira, Spera is a quote from Victor Hugo’s novel Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). I remember it being one of the first thoughts that came into my mind when I saw the great Parisian cathedral engulfed in flames: Breathe, Hope. My second thought went to Bach, and to the vivid childhood memories I had attending concerts in the cathedral, listening to his organ music performed in this magnificent place, and the impact that had on me.
As a young boy, the legendary violinist Yehudi Menuhin once imagined that if he played Bach’s Chaconne beautifully enough in the Sistine Chapel, it would bring peace to the world. I understand why this idealistic thought could enter a young musician’s mind. I used to enjoy thinking as a teenager that if physics’s String Theory was true, a theory explaining that the universe’s smallest fundamental particles, are in fact tiny vibrating strings, those strings were probably vibrating to the music of Bach. Studying and performing Bach’s music is an experience like no other. It is a journey into a perfectly conceived, metaphysical universe, where the laws of physics are laid out in front of you, where there is no chaos, just beauty. His music taps into what is best within us, it connects us and reminds us of our common humanity, and for that, it remains forever relevant. It is the music I always turn to in most difficult times, like a compass for the soul.
Igor Stravinsky once said that “music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.” Probably no other composer has come as close to embodying these words nor had the same impact on their art as Bach. And it is not surprising that nearly all that followed, loved and studied his music: “Music owes as much to Bach as religion to its founder.” Robert Schumann
It is music of such clarity, coherence and expressive power, that it is able to transcend its original medium, and to some extent, style. Musicologists will argue forever about stylistic considerations when performing Bach. But to me, these debates, while interesting, are secondary to the essence of his music, and to the talent, power of conviction and imagination of the performer. I have heard and been moved to tears listening to Bach’s music performed by wonderful musicians on period instruments, modern instruments, transcribed and dramatised, or left unchanged. His music has even been arranged successfully by amazing jazz artists like Jacques Loussier. Such is the universality of his music’s DNA.
This album pays tribute to this legacy. I wanted to highlight wonderful pianists and composers like Liszt and Busoni, musicians that revered Bach’s music and who transcribed some of his greatest organ and violin works for the modern piano. I am also very pleased to introduce lesser known arrangements, such as Theodor Szántó’s monumental and uncompromising transcriptions of the Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, and the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor.
When in the 1970s the biologist Lewis Thomas was asked to suggest the contents of the Voyager Golden Records, meant to travel across the Milky Way for potential aliens to find, he famously said: “I would send the complete works of Bach. But that would be boasting.” I do not have Yehudi Menuhin’s childhood ambition, but after what the world has endured these past months, I turn to Bach, and I remember my fellow humans, and I am grateful to be on this planet, to be a musician, to share my art, and I remember to breathe, and I remember to hope. Spira, Spera.
Listen to the 1st single here: http://smarturl.it/SpiraSpera