Bach & Beyond Part 1 and its sequels will appeal to Bach fans as well as those interested in contemporary music. Listeners will explore how composers influence each other across the centuries as Koh pairs Bach’s sonatas and partitas with works by living composers.

 

Koh is uniquely qualified for such a project. In its glowing review of her 2011 landmark, marathon concert of all six Bach violin sonatas and partitas, The New York Times said, "By refusing to specialize in a particular corner of the violin repertory, and leaping freely among several, Jennifer Koh has built a following that draws on, and ideally brings together, several of the music world’s style-conscious enclaves."

 

Bach & Beyond Part 1 opens with the Partita No. 3 in E Major, BWV 1004, a suite of seven dances. Eugène Ysaÿe’s 1924 Sonata No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 27, begins with the tune that opens the Preludio of that Bach work. Missy Mazzoli’s Dissolve, O My Heart, commissioned for Koh by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and premiered by her in 2011, begins on a resonant and evocative D minor chord — the same one that opens the Chaconne of Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D Minor, BWV 1004. Kaija Saariaho’s 1994 Nocturne, in Memory of Witold Lutoslawski includes a sly reference to one of the dance movements in Bach’s Second Partita, which concludes Bach & Beyond Part 1.