Benjamin Alard: Complete works for harpsichord by Bach at Palau de la Música Catalana

About the Event

Explore the beauty of harpsichord music at Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, where masterworks from Bach come to life in this incredible performance.

Benjamin Alard is perhaps the natural heir to the legendary Gustav Leonhardt, or one of his most important successors, thanks to his great skill, refined technique and impressive musical talent, which he has used to capture hearts in Barcelona.
For more than a decade, Benjamin Alard has been performing Bach’s keyboard works at the Palau. An epic project for a loyal audience that has long admired an artist who has progressed from concerts at the Petit Palau to become a prodigy of virtuosity and intimacy in the true spirit of the Thomaskantor.
Most of the works for organ date back to the time when Johann Sebastian Bach worked at the Weimar court. In this programme, the French performer Benjamin Alard—immersed in the titanic task of recording the entirety of Bach's keyboard works—combines the well‐known Toccata and fugue in D minor, BWV 565 with the collection of Schübler Chorales (named after the publisher), the five Canonic Variations BWV 769 on the Christmas choral Vom Himmel hoch, and the famous Passacaglia and fugue in C minor, BWV 582, a truly iconic work of music for this instrument.

Johann Sebastian Bach

The name Bach and the word musician had long been synonyms in Germany as the world saw 56 musicians from this kin. But it was Johann Sebastian Bach, a genius composer and virtuoso organ player, who shed lustre on his family name. He was born on th 31st of March 1685 in Eisenach, a small town in Thuringia. At the age of 10 he became an orphan and was brought up by his elder brother Johann Christoph, who was an organist in a neighbouring town. His brother was the one to teach music to the young Johann Sebastian. Later he moved to Luneburg where he attended a church school and mastered the techniques of playing violin, viola, piano and organ by the age of 17. Besides that, Bach was a choir singer and later after his voice broke he became a chanter’s assistant.
In 1703 Bach was hired as a court musician in the chapel of Duke Johann Ernst III. He earned such a good reputation there that he was later invited to Arnstadt to be an organist at the New Church, where he wrote his best organ works. In 1723 he moved to Leipzig to be a chantor at St. Thomas Church where he stayed until his death of a stroke in 1750. In the year of his death he had undergone unsuccessful eye surgery which lead him to lose his eyesight. During that strenuous time his second wife Anna Magdalena helped him to write his last musical pieces. Bach’s artistic legacy is vast. He created compositions in all genres of the time: oratorias, cantatas, masses, motets, music for organ, piano and violin.