Lara St. John and Marie-Pierre Langlamet BACH SONATAS

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New Album Featuring Sonatas by J.S. Bach Performed on Violin and Harp to be Released as an iTunes Exclusive on January 17, 2012, with SACD/CD Hybrid to Follow on February 14, 2012

New Album Featuring Sonatas by J.S. Bach Performed on Violin and Harp to be Released as an iTunes Exclusive on January 17, 2012, with SACD/CD Hybrid to Follow on February 14, 2012
This winter, celebrated violinist Lara St. John and Marie-Pierre Langlamet, principal harpist of the Berlin Philharmonic, present an album of J.S. Bach sonatas offering a new perspective and performed on violin and harp. The album will be released as an iTunes digital exclusive on January 17, 2012, with a wide release to all retailers on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2012.

This is Lara St. John’s third foray into Bach on her Ancalagon label. About her first, The Concerto Album released in 2002, Gramophone wrote, “She makes the most ordinary passages come to life…. It is difficult to argue with such technically dazzling and unfailingly musical interpretations.” Of her second album, The Six Sonatas and Partitas for Violin Solo released in 2007, American Record Guide stated, “I simply don't know where else you can go to hear Bach played at this level of artistry.”

Always a thought-provoking musician, St. John raises the question of authenticity and performance practice on this new disc. Bach was a prolific composer, but also an inveterate arranger of his own work and that of others. The adaptability of this music, its capacity to be reinterpreted in new contexts, by different instruments, is perhaps its most authentic quality. It is in this spirit that the pieces are performed here with violin and harp. What is the impact on the listener when hearing familiar pieces with new sounds?

St. John shares the inspiration behind this recording: “I have had a lifelong relationship with Bach’s solo instrumental works, from when I was four years old and first performed the double concerto with my brother, to my first E Major Partita movements a few years later. As a Canadian, I grew up with the omnipresent Glenn Gould. Oddly, as a pre-teen, I also developed an obsession with Bach’s organ works.”

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