The recording took place in March 2022 at the Castell de Cardona in Spain, chosen for its magical acoustics that combine resonance and clarity.
Composition History
Bach worked on The Art of Fugue for at least the last ten years of his life, with a fair copy of eight fugues dating back to 1742.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Bach's ability to exploit the emotional potential within a group of notes is unmatched in Western tradition, as seen in The Art of Fugue where he used the most basic building blocks of tonal music.
Compositional Technique
The Art of Fugue is considered a culmination of Bach's decades-long mastery of counterpoint.
Interpretation
The Cuarteto Casals chose to interpret The Art of Fugue in the most human way possible, seeing each voice as an embodiment of deeply fallible people, with the divine glimpsed in the perfection of their combination.
Composition History
The final fugue of The Art of Fugue is incomplete, abruptly ending just as Bach combined three main themes, one of which represented his own name (B-A-C-H) in musical notation.
Instruments
Bach did not specify instrumentation for The Art of Fugue, leading most commentators to believe it was intended for a keyboard instrument.
