Unser neuer Gesamtkatalog

Bach, Johann Sebastian:
Präludien und Fugen aus dem Wohltemperierten Clavier BWV 860, 887, 858, 853, 891
Dmitri Shostakovich:
Präludien und Fugen op. 87 Nos. 4, 14, 15, 17
Bernd Glemser, Klavier

Dmitri Shostakovich composed his Preludes and Fugues after attending the celebrations in Leipzig in 1950 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach’s death. On the concert scene, this led to the increasingly frequent practice of playing Bach’s Preludes and Fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier in direct proximity to Shostavich’s counterparts. Here Bernd Glemser does not follow an encyclopaedic strategy, but developed a programme which takes a dramaturgically motivated path and highlights atmospheric contexts.
Bernd Glemser has recorded more than 30 CDs to date. While the former pupil of Vitaly Margulis was particularly closely associated with the German Romantic piano repertoire and the virtuoso Russian school, he most recently earned acclaim for his recordings of transcriptions of works by Bach (OehmsClassics 706).
Along with a full programme as an internationally sought-after soloist, Bernd Glemser also indulges his interest in teaching – currently as a professor at the music college in Würzburg.

Kindred spirits

Bernd Glemser speaks with Marco Frei

Mr. Glemser, what relationship is there between Bach’s Wohltemperiertes Klavier and Dmitri Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues from 1950/51?
That is a very complex question. One can examine them as a musicologist would and determine structural relationships such as connections between individual fugues, similarities in counterpoint and so on. There are virtually no crab forms in these Bach and Shostakovich works, and naturally, there are motives that resemble each other.

Can you give a concrete example?
The first four tones of Bach’s E-flat Minor from the first volume and Shostakovich’s E-flat Minor, No. 14, both of which I have included on this CD, are the same – only the order is somewhat different. I don’t think that is coincidental. In my opinion, there is less resemblance in what is meant to be expressed.

How so?
Bach’s personal faith always plays a role in his works. He always wrote for the glory of God; one cannot say that of Shostakovich, however. I feel that religiosity in Shostakovich is only important to a partial extent – but it still does play a role.

Do you mean Shostakovich’s use of the church modes?
That is an important point because he does use sacred themes in the 24 Preludes and Fugues. The fugue in E Minor, No. 4, is an example of this religiosity; the first theme seems to have something hymn-like to it.

In 1953, this theme reoccurred as the main theme in the first movement of the Symphony No. 10 – the so-called “Stalin Symphony”.
I think that in general, worlds overlap in Shostakovich’s music – or even more, they collide. The Fugue in D-flat Major, No. 15, is worlds away from the Fugue in E Minor. This extremely dissonant, “formalist” fugue is not compatible with Socialist Realism in the slightest and can be thoroughly understood as a political statement.

Also because Shostakovich returns full circle to his avant-garde early works, which were banned at the time in the USSR; I’m referring to the Piano Sonata No. 1 from 1926. In respect to this background, isn’t it astonishing that Shostakovich – shortly before he composed the 24 Preludes and Fugues in 1948 – was again subjected to a massive attack during the course of the second Stalinist cultural campaign, likewise on the grounds that he was too “formalist”.
Absolutely. It’s amazing that Shostakovich had the nerve to do that. This fugue must have shocked listeners, and this is why I really think that the 24 Preludes and Fugues were a good opportunity for Shostakovich to express something he would have never been able to express in another context because it would have been too obvious. He would have never composed something as “formalist” as the Fugue in D-flat Major, No. 15 in a symphony.

Because the symphony – in contrast to chamber and piano music – at least since Beethoven – is a public genre with “mass appeal”?
Yes. I think that Shostakovich could create a certain amount of freedom for himself in chamber and piano music. There’s long tradition of that. Take Beethoven, for example. His piano sonatas and string quartets were not written for a broad public – and think about the declarations he makes in them! In his symphonies, Beethoven would have never included the type of advanced material he used in his last sonatas and quartets. The symphonies always had to reach the greater public.

Shostakovich composed his 24 Preludes and Fugues specifically for the Bach anniversary in Leipzig. And the two composers were paired on recordings early on. What was the impetus for your project?
In the 1980s, when I was still a student, the Südwestrundfunk [Southwest RBO] – at the time, still called the Südwest-Funk in Freiburg – had a concert series. On one occasion, Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues and Bach’s Wohltemperiertes Klavier were performed together, meticulously sequenced and with various pianists. I performed one of these concerts. The programming, however, called for Bach and Shostakovich to be performed separately, i.e. in different halves of the concert. In this project, I wanted to connect the two composers much more intimately and not “musicologically”, i.e. according to keys or motivic ideas. For me it was more important to establish a sound dramaturgic sequence – to find corresponding moods.

There are many important Bach interpretations, and Tatiana Nikolayeva premiered Shostakovich’s cycle as well as recorded it a number of times afterwards. What is your response to this “inheritance”, if you will?
I listened to Nikolayeva as a child. She does not precisely follow much of what Shostakovich indicated in the music – and I’m not talking about the metronome speed, which is always a touchy subject. I also have problems with Shostakovich’s own interpretations, by the way, because they are sometimes extremely fast. He plays some of what I perceive as threatening or dry with a lot of pedal and somewhat sweetish. After all, he came from the romantic tradition. I tend to avoid the pedal in order to bring out the polyphony and counterpoint – also when I play Bach.

What can young people learn from Bach and Shostakovich?
One can learn from Bach that strict form does not mean a lack of emotionality. A Bach fugue can be just as sad as one of Beethoven’s dirges. When one plays Bach, one must learn to articulate feelings in various manners and fashions – also from the technical point of view. In regard to Shostakovich, one can learn about how to say much with scant means. And just like Bach, one can learn from his being, although one must heed one thing: many of those who knew him and knew of his hardships and conflicts are now passing away. We may never be able to decrypt many of the allusions in his music. Still, the existential questions in his works remain audible – giving them a similar general human significance as Bach’s works have.

Marco Frei wrote his dissertation on Dmitri Shostakovich. His book Chaos statt Musik – Dmitri Schostakowitsch, die Prawda-Kampagne von 1936 bis 1938 und der Sozialistische Realismus was published in 2006 by PFAU-Verlag Saarbrücken.