After Bach
Brah Mehldau (piano)
The longer original compositions, characteristically urbane, are the main event for jazz ears. Their densely woven two-handed runs with bitter sweet phrasings and accents are a richly satisfying...
After Bach
Brah Mehldau (piano)
Purchase product
The longer original compositions, characteristically urbane, are the main event for jazz ears. Their densely woven two-handed runs with bitter sweet phrasings and accents are a richly satisfying...
About
Brad Mehldau’s After Bach comprises the pianist/composer’s recordings of four preludes and one fugue from J.S. Bach’s Well- Tempered Clavier, each followed by an ‘After Bach’ piece written by Mehldau and inspired by its WTC mate. The album begins with Mehldau’s own ‘Before Bach: Benediction’ and ends with his ‘Prayer For Healing’. As Mehldau’s label mate Timo Andres says in his After Bach liner note, “As a professional organist, much of Bach’s work took the form of improvisation, and during his lifetime it was the virtuosity and complexity of these improvisations for which he was most admired. Some three centuries after the fact, Brad Mehldau takes up this tradition and applies it to a frustratingly unknowable aspect of Bach’s art.”
Andres continues, “There have always been elements of Mehldau’s style that recall Bach, especially his densely-woven voicing – but he’s not striving to imitate or play dress-up. Rather, After Bach surveys their shared ground as keyboardists, improvisers, and composers, making implicit parallels explicit.”
After Bach originated in a work Mehldau first performed in 2015 – commissioned by Carnegie Hall, The Royal Conservatory of Music, The National Concert Hall, and Wigmore Hall – called Three Pieces After Bach.
Brad Mehldau’s Nonesuch debut was the 2004 solo disc Live in Tokyo and includes six records with his trio: House on Hill, Day Is Done, Brad Mehldau Trio Live, Ode, Where Do You Start, and Blues and Ballads. His collaborative records on the label include Love Sublime, Highway Rider, Metheny Mehldau, Metheny Mehldau Quartet, Modern Music, Mehliana: Taming the Dragon, Nearness with Joshua Redman, and last year’s Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau. His additional solo albums on Nonesuch include Live in Marciac and the eight-LP/four- CD 10 Years Solo Live, which the New York Times says ‘contains some of the most impressive pianism he has captured on record’.
Contents and tracklist
Awards and reviews
April 2018
The longer original compositions, characteristically urbane, are the main event for jazz ears. Their densely woven two-handed runs with bitter sweet phrasings and accents are a richly satisfying counterpoint to the nuanced but respectful Bach pieces.
July 2018
Now the jazz potential of Bach’s music is explored by Brad Mehldau in a new album. After Bach features four preludes and one fugue from Well- Tempered Clavier, plus five compositions indebted to them. It opens with the occasionally polymetric and fugato ‘Before Bach: Benediction’. This is followed by alternating works actually by Bach with improvisations inspired by them. Conceptually, the album has striking virtues. ‘Ostinato’, at 12 minutes, is one of the most remarkable thematic improvisations on classical material that I know – developing Bach’s subject with imaginative power, and sustaining its ostinato feel, into a world of jazz harmonies in piquant contrast with the Baroque. The more I listen, the more I am amazed.
1st March 2018
Where Bach’s preludes and fugues are like gentle sudoku puzzles, Mehldau’s cryptic harmonies sometimes feel as if you’re grappling with an insoluble 5x5 Rubik’s Cube... However, by the two closing tracks, Ostinato and Prayer for Healing, Mehldau is wearing his chops lightly and starting to tug at the heartstrings.
June 2018
J.S. Bach invented modern jazz – where would Bird have been without him? – and the likes of Jacques Loussier have regularly jazzed up the great German keyboard improviser’s back catalogue, to stirring and popular effect. Mehldau doesn’t take the easy route, you wouldn’t expect him to...
