Joanna Goodale BACH IN A CIRCLE

Born into a British-Turkish family, Joanna Goodale is a French-Swiss pianist with an eclectic and creative identity, opening up the classical repertoire to traditional world music and to her own comprovisations. 

She has been invited to perform in Switzerland, in France, in Germany, in Turkey, in Spain and in the United Kingdom. Graduate of a Master of Arts in Piano (Geneva) and a Master of Arts in Anthropology (London), she has benefitted from the support of the Fondation L’ABRI in Geneva and of the advice of internationally renowned pianists such as Alice Ader, Alain Kremksi, Cedric Pescia, Menahem Pressler and Anne Queffélec. Deeply convinced that music can transcend borders and touch the sublime, she invites her public to enter in communion with sound and silence in a space-time of rare intensity. 

BACH IN A CIRCLE proposes an encounter between the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and the Sufi whirling dervishes, weaved around a programme where the pieces are in a dialogue, questioning the mysteries of the human soul and reflecting the movements of the Universe. 

After visiting Turkey many times, I realised that Sufi music brought out in me similar emotions to those I feel when listening to Johann Sebastian Bach. This led me to do some research and then highlight the similarities between these two universes which, at first glance, can seem very different. Indeed, sacred Sufi songs and the works of Bach are both characterized by an expression of deep spirituality, a quest to represent the cosmic order and the use of repetitive cyclical patterns in perpetual movement, leading to a sense of transcendence and inner silence. (Joanna Goodale)

Olga Scheps VOCALISE

ECHO Klassik award winner Olga Scheps has quickly earned her standing among the established and sought-after pianists of her generation with her individual and characteristic musicality, her captivating stage presence, her scintillating sound and her warm touch. What especially sets her apart from others is her remarkable ability to enthrall her audiences by recounting musical narratives in her interpretations.

Olga Scheps was born in Moscow in 1986 and came to Germany at the age of six. She lives in Cologne and studies with Pavel Gililov at Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln. Further studies have led her to Arie Vardi and Dmitrij Bashkirov. Moreover, for nearly ten years now, she has received significant artistic impulses from Alfred Brendel.

An exclusive artist of SONYClassical/RCA, Olga Scheps’ debut CD “Chopin” was released in January 2010; she received the ECHO Klassik award as “Newcomer of the Year” in October 2010. She released her second album with works by Russian composers in the autumn of 2010. In September 2012, Olga Scheps presented her most recent album “Schubert”.

Olga Scheps frequently performs recitals in venues such as the Berlin Philharmonie, the Great Hall of the Laeiszhalle Hamburg, Munich’s Prinzregententheater, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Liederhalle Stuttgart, Musikverein Wien, and Cologne’s Philharmonie.

She has worked with renowned orchestras, such as the NDR Sinfonieorchester, the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, the Münchner Symphoniker, the Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra, the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra. Her 2012/13 concert season includes tours with the Staatskapelle Weimar as well as the State Symphony Capella of Russia.

Since her debut at the Ruhr Piano Festival in 2007, Olga Scheps has been a regular guest at various prominent festivals, such as the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Kissinger Sommer, Heidelberger Frühling, Klavier-Festival Ruhr, Rheingau Musik Festival, and the Hitzacker Summer Music Festival. Her recital at the Ruhr Piano Festival in May 2009 was recorded and published in the “Edition Piano Festival Ruhr” in cooperation with the Fono Forum magazine.

Olga Scheps also is an ardent chamber musician. She regularly collaborates with colleagues such as the violinists Daniel Hope and Erik Schumann, the cellists Adrian Brendel, Alban Gerhardt and Jan Vogler, as well as with the violist Nils Mönkemeyer.

TV reports in the German newscast “heute journal“ (ZDF), “Capriccio“ (BR Bavarian Public Radio & Television), Arte, 3Sat, and NDR North German Public Radio & Television have quickly fostered her publicity among a broader audience. As an ambassador for classical music, she is especially passionate about addressing a younger audience.

Olga Scheps is a fellowship holder at the “Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben” and the “German National Merit Foundation ”.

Anna Gourari CANTO OSCURO

Anna Gourari is a young musician steeped in the venerable Russian piano school, its technical verities and Old World glamour. She has “a very physical, even visceral quality to her music-making that conjures the sound of such golden-age figures as Horowitz and Cortot,” declared Fanfare. With her ECM debut, Gourari offers a set of “Canto Oscuro”: dark songs. The pianist performs two of the most affecting of J.S. Bach’s chorale preludes – “Ich ruf’ zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ” and “Nun komm’ der Heiden Heiland” – in arrangements of quiet sublimity by Ferruccio Busoni. Gourari also includes his iconic version of the gripping “Chaconne” from Bach’s Partita No. 2 for solo violin. From her native Russia, she adds Alexander Siloti’s Bach- transcription “Prélude in B minor”, as well as Sofia Gubaidulina’s early “Chaconne”, a vessel for ghosts of the Baroque. The album’s centrepiece is Hindemith’s Suite “1922”, a work influenced by both Baroque models and the Jazz Age; yet its “Shimmy”, “Boston” and “Ragtime” movements are given a dissonant, darkly ironic cast, and the Suite’s “Nachtstück” is night music as haunted and haunting, a very much “dark song”.
About the program, Gourari says: “Bach is a musical god for all of us. I can hardly imagine that someone wouldn’t adore him and his genius. I have been studying and playing a lot of his music: the Partitas, the Suites, ‘The Well-Tempered Clavier’. But along with all of his instrumental works, I have always loved his chorales. Busoni’s transcriptions are the ideal way for me not only to love this music but to play it, too. To me, Busoni’s transcriptions are incredibly intelligent and emotionally touching. One can hear Busoni’s devotion to Bach in every bar, and it took someone of Busoni’s historic stature – being a wonderful pianist, experienced composer and singular personality – to make arrangements such as these.”
For Gourari, combining the Bach-Busoni “Chaconne” on a recording with Sofia Gubaidulina’s “Chaconne” of 1962 has been a long-held desire. She says: “There are obvious influences from Bach in Gubaidulina’s work, but also from Busoni. Her piece has been dear to me since I was 16 years old. I have had the honor of meeting her several times, including working with her in Switzerland a few years ago. I think Gubaidulina’s “Chaconne” is one of those timeless works of art that will be played 100 years from now and beyond.”
At first glance, it might appear that Hindemith’s Suite “1922” is an odd man out in this program. Yet the early 20th century was a “dark age,” after all, something that the composer undoubtedly sought to convey with black sarcasm in his treatment of several popular dances from the 1920s, as he twisted them into what Gourari calls a “fantastic” – and perhaps from our vantage, phantasmal – neo-Baroque suite. Gourari adds: “Dark songs are not necessarily quiet. . .”