Johann Sebastian Bach’s last (study) work “The Art of Fugue”, which may not even have been intended for a performance, can be played on the harpsichord, the organ, as a gamba or string quartet with bassoon or, as in 1927, with a large orchestra, harpsichord and organ . But what Reinhard Febel did at the request of the Tal/Groethuysen piano duo in 2014 goes far beyond that: he carried out a kind of overpainting or double exposure by not omitting a note by Bach, but sometimes adding many at the most different places. In the series “Chamber Music in Dialogue” of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, the duo now played two thirds of the 18 fugues and canons live (as they did on CD in 2020). In conversation with his composer colleague Nikolaus Brass, Reinhard Febel vividly explained his approach.
Sometimes the interventions are microscopically small, then there are “only” tone repetitions or added overtones, sometimes the scalpel cuts deeper, then in some “Contrapunctus” the two musicians play the same thing offset by a tone, or the two halves of so-called “mirror fugues” become not performed one after the other, but simultaneously: Andreas Groethuysen murmurs legato and softly, Yaara Tal intersperses staccato in the forte. Some fugues have to be played very slowly, some enormously fast, sometimes the structures become clearer, sometimes they almost blur: That is extremely exciting to hear, and anyone who has ever gotten a little tired after a one and a half hour performance on the harpsichord or organ will stay wide awake here, because every moment something else unexpected and enlightening is happening.