No fewer than seven concerts of this year´s festival are devoted to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). While this might seem a truly generous amount of space to reserve for a single composer, in fact it does fully correspond with Bach´s impact on music of his own period as well as all those that have followed. Of the immense catalogue of genres cultivated by the great “cantor of Leipzig”, our focus will be this time set on his keyboard music, and his works for stringed instruments.

The first evening in this series offers a programme of seven Toccatas written during Bach´s early period, under the influence of his great predecessor, Dietrich Buxtehude, whose home turf was the city of Lübeck. It was actually there, in northern Germany, that he genre of organ toccata had originally evolved from a formally loose virtuoso piece, to a composition in several movements, with fugue passages and contrasting vocal parts. There, Bach´s approach  typically involves an opening by a dramatic passage making way for a gentle arioso part which eventually once again leads up to a final fugue. In these early compositions, Bach´s idiom is eminently personal and expressive.

                                                                                                  sleeve-note: Dita Hradecká / translation: Ivan Vomáčka