Angela Hewitt concludes her performance of the complete keyboard works of Johann Sebastian Bach with a piece that may or may not have been intended for the keyboard.

The mammoth Art of Fugue, one of Bach’s final works and one left unfinished at his death, is perhaps the greatest monument to the imitative form ever penned. Demonstrating mastery in many arcane types of counterpoint—using the theme upside-down, putting the voices at strange harmonic distances from one another, introducing multiple themes and then employing them simultaneously—this awe-inspiring work emphatically demonstrates the eternity of music. In the final, incomplete fugue, Bach states his “musical motto” before the music trails off into the distance.

Angela Hewitt, piano

Program
Bach The Art of Fugue