![]() Rather, After Bach surveys their shared ground as keyboardists, improvisers, and composers, making implicit parallels explicit. There have always been elements of Mehldau’s style that recall Bach, especially his densely-woven voicing-but he’s not striving to imitate or play dress-up. In the process, he makes a case for a third stream of Bach interpretation, sitting comfortably alongside the individualist (think Glenn Gould) and the historically-faithful (John Eliot Gardiner’s cantata cycle). Some three centuries after the fact, Brad Mehldau takes up this tradition and applies it to a frustratingly unknowable aspect of Bach’s art. As the disciplines of composer and performer became increasingly specialized, they became separate jobs improvisation left the tradition over time, as written scores became more complex and virtuosic. But we can’t know the half of it as a professional organist, much of Bach’s work took the form of improvisation, and during his lifetime it was the virtuosity and complexity of these improvisations for which he was most admired. ![]() When we think of Bach, we tend to think of him as the scholarly artist, a consummate craftsman turning out work after work of immutable brilliance. I had the pleasure of listening to it many times and writing the liner note, as follows. ![]() ![]() Brad Mehldau’s album After Bach is out this month on Nonesuch Records.
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