© Zani-Casadio

Johann Sebastian Bach
L’arte della Fuga
Die Kunst der Fuge BWV 1080

Accademia Bizantina
Ottavio Dantone harpsichord and conduction
Alessandro Tampieri, Ana Liz Ojeda violins
Diego Mecca viola
Mauro Valli cello
Stefano Demicheli organ


“A speculative structure is an immanent concept, inherent in the fugue. This is why the first and foremost aspect that needs to be highlighted is the composer’s ability in turning everything that stems from the coercive control of composition into something beautiful and communicative”. Building on this approach, Ottavio Dantone conducts his Accademia Bizantina in a new performance of Bach’s The Art of the Fugue. No instrumentation is specified, but the choice of a small ensemble here is dictated by the purpose of highlighting the elegant, complex but exciting movement of the single voices in a contrapuntal fabric that, in the interpretation by the Ravenna ensemble, stops exactly where Bach had stopped, after the exposure of the three themes of the Fuga a tre soggetti, united for the very first time.


The programme