BRICE PAUSET (b.1965): Kontrapartita (interspersed with movements from Bach’s Partitas for Solo Violin), HEINZ HOLLIGER (b.1939): 3 kleine Szenen, ROBERTO GERHARD (1896-1970): Chaconne.

Description: Three thoroughly modern, very different, ways to pay tribute to Bach. Holliger's little suite comprises a miniature chaconne, all in chords and with the addition of singing voice, Hungarian Gypsy style; a ghostly parade of extended effects; and a microtonal duduk with singing eloquence. Gerhard's Chaconne is a full-scale, 12-movement work of some 17 minutes, which begins with a direct reference to Bach's famous quadruple-stopped chord that opens his D minor Chaconne and proceeds to pay tribute to the forms, moods, and figuration of Bach’s work, but in an atonal, serial vocabulary - a remarkable achievement. Typically, Gerhard treats his twelve-note row in his own way, relaxing some of the strictures of traditional dodecaphonic music but constructing all his material and organizing it according to his own rules. The result, in its wealth of character and mood imbues serial modernism with Bach's profound humanity, and, as Gringolts remarks including ‘everything from chorale to ländler [in] probably the most Viennese music ever written by a Catalan.’ Pauset's Kontrapartita is a partita "after Bach" but in Pauset's own vocabulary; the movements are inspired by individual movements from Bach's partitas and referring to them, and in some cases quoting from them. The Sarabande is obviously a Sarabande, the Allemande an Allemande, the Chaconne plainly modelled after its illustrious predecessor, but the music is Pauset’s own, inhabited, as it were, by the spirit of Bach. Ilya Gringolts (violin).