Bach - A Arte da Fuga

O blog P. Q. P. Bach, já citado aqui outras vezes, coloca mais uma versão da Arte da Fuga para nossa alegria. Cada versão bem executada da obra é um achado: como Bach não designou sua instrumentação, as experiências têm sido numerosas. Esta certamente é uma surpresa para quem conhece a obra, e será uma agradável audição para os apreciadores de flauta doce. O Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians tem o seguinte a dizer sobre a obra:

As a didactic keyboard work, the Art of Fugue in some ways forms a counterpart to the two books of the ‘48’, with the difference that here it is exclusively the fugue that is in question, and, what is more, the fugues are developed from a single theme. Bach’s work on the Art of Fugue was accomplished in two stages – from about 1740 to about 1745, and then (in connection with preparing the work for publication) in about 1748–50. The extant autograph score represents the conclusion of the first stage, in which the conception of the work already appears clearly: beginning with simple fugues (Bach avoided this term, speaking of ‘contrapunctus’), progressing through ‘counter-fugues’, double fugues and triple fugues, with interpolated canons, and culminating in a mirror fugue. For the printed version the number of movements was not only increased by four (two canons, a fourth simple fugue and most notably a closing quadruple fugue) but their order was rearranged so as to expound more logically the ‘chapter of instruction on fugues’. When Bach died the work may have been more ‘complete’ than it is in the form in which it has survived. In particular the quadruple fugue had surely been completed in all essentials, since the composition of its combinatorial section must necessarily be an early stage in the composition of a quadruple fugue. Only the three opening sections of the exposition, however, are extant, and these – further abbreviated by the editors, give the Art of Fugue the appearance of being a mighty torso.

Diz PQP: Aqui temos o Loeki Stardust Quartet interpretando A Arte da Fuga com uma variedade de flautas doces que vão desde a sopranino até as mais graves. É curioso e bonito. A gravação é excelente. Os microfones estão tão próximos que podemos ouvir o som da saliva e do ar no bocal de alguns instrumentos, principalmente os graves.