Cindy Castillo

Frédéric dUrsel & Cindy Castillo – Träume und Erwachen (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 51:30 minutes | 929 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Paraty

When Cindy Castillo and Frédéric d’Ursel told me about their project involving the six Sonatas for violin and keyboard by J.-S. Bach and invited me to write pieces for violin and organ to frame two of them, I immediately and intensely felt the challenge. The juxtaposition of styles that would inevitably result implied an equation that was not easy to solve: the music to be created had to be in connection, in dialogue with that of this “Master” – one of the most famous in the entire History of Western Music! In any case, it seemed to me that the project had to aim at a proposal for an overall form whose elements would be brought together in a coherent architecture that would be perceptible to the listener. Finally, it seemed to me that the fragments I was going to interpose should also prepare the listener to rediscover Bach’s work and prepare him to welcome this particular version of these sonatas that tradition has handed down to us as pieces for violin and harpsichord. A simple three-part insertion proposal was adopted: a prelude for organ and violin to introduce the Sonata in C minor BWV 1017, an interlude for solo violin to lead into the Sonata in G major BWV 1019 (which naturally creates a balance with the third movement of this second sonata that Bach intended for solo keyboard) and a postlude for violin and organ to conclude the ensemble. The complex harmonies and singularly expressive melodic sinuosities filled with fleeting dissonances of the very famous Sicilian opening of the Sonata in C minor BWV 1017 were particularly inspiring to dialogue with Bach’s music in unlikely, sometimes ambiguous stylistic confines and in a dreamlike sound universe that led to the title chosen for this production: Träume und Erwachen.

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