Gavotte en Rondeau

I wrote this little paraphrase of the Gavotte from Bach’s Partita in E major twenty years ago. Actually it is a sort of double homage: on one hand, it is of course a tribute to J.S. Bach, whose miraculous, ingenious music surely must be one of the highest achievements of mankind; on the other hand, and closer to our time, I wanted to salute the early 20th-century virtuoso pianists whose unbelievable recordings have held me spellbound. These masters of the keyboard - Josef Lhevinne, Sergei Rachmaninov, Josef Hofmann, to name but a few - were magicians, sorcerers who could astonish their audiences with an unending variety of conjuring tricks, sometimes as if holding time suspended between their fingertips, elevating listeners to another reality. (Olli Mustonen)