Tabea Debus & Tom Foster • Folio: Lessons from the Master (CD)
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•• 'FOLIO' WAS OUR FEATURED ALBUM FOR AUGUST 2025 ••
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Folio – Lessons from the Master
Works by Bach, Nante, Albinoni, Prince of Saxe-Weimar
"All one has to do is hit the right notes at the right times, and the instrument plays itself."
This might well be a note scribbled inside a portfolio of a student's lessons with Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach's responsibilities as a teacher inspired him to create a myriad of pieces for the benefit of his students, both in and outside his family. This imagined folio of lessons highlights various facets of music-making and learning: from copying and arranging, through accompanying and ornamenting, to explorations of style and technique.
There are several sets of pieces that Bach collated (also) with his lessons in mind, amongst them the 'Orgelbüchlein', the Little Organ Book, which he started whilst working in Weimar in 1708, and the so-called Inventions and Sinfonias, composed in the 1720s in Cöthen for his son Wilhelm Friedemann and for "lovers of the clavier, and particularly those who desire to learn". He worked on the 'Orgelbüchlein' over many years, adding to it and making changes, presumably adapting to his student's needs. His inscription on the title page proclaims in a rhyming couplet that his compositions were "in praise for the Almighty's will, and for my neighbour's greater skill". In the context of this programme two choral preludes and two Sinfonias are used as "warm-ups", or preludes for five imagined lessons, functioning as the binding of the student's portfolio.
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