Performer’s notes

Laurence Dreyfus

What do you feel now, looking back at this project?

It has been an incredible journey. At the very beginning I didn’t really have a clue how deeply we were going to get into this whole idea of transforming Bach. The more we enriched ourselves in this amazing world, all of a sudden these links, together with the older English traditions and the way that we’ve developed ways of playing them, came together in the most extraordinary way.

Have you discovered more about Bach as a result?

Absolutely. For one thing, I love organ music but I didn’t really have an intimate relationship with a lot of the repertoire. The discovery there was that these are some of the most harmonically adventurous pieces that Bach ever composed, and he was able to do this by going back to the 16th-century traditions and at the same time modernise them in his own very peculiar way. As soon as you start untangling these strands and start playing them as chamber music, you feel you are with him on the compositional page on some level.

What were the biggest challenges in this third volume?

The B minor Fugue has wild string crossings that do appeal to the idea of a sort of Bariolage violin effect; it was an unbelievable challenge to get it together.

Other pieces had little filigree, quick, scary things going on, with Bach emerging almost as an expressionist composer – as in the A minor Fugue. That was a challenge, too, and I thought, ‘Are these really going to work?!’ I’m thrilled we were able to surmount some of the challenges, technically and musically.