Bach’s Inspiration

​Bach remains a great source of inspiration for composers to this day. One of his most impressive pieces is his Musical Offering. The festival musicians perform the Trio Sonata, in which Bach’s bold experiments with motifs and themes find an intuitive musical form. The ingenious interweaving of motifs also fascinaties in Woodland Variations by the Finnish Bach admirer Sebastian Fagerlund. A landscape with trees stretching to the horizon and vistas that leave you breathless. The Animato Quartet plays together with bassoonist Bram van Sambeek, to whom the piece is dedicated.

Bach was a shining example for Johannes Brahms. In his Four Serious Songs he set biblical texts about transience to music. The music breathes the spirit of Bach’s solo cantatas. In Jelmer de Moed’s arrangement for string sextet, the almost baroque polyphony gains even more relief. Mathilde Wantenaar’s Songs of Transience fit seamlessly into this theme and the world of Brahms. She too is inspired by Bach. In her Nocturnes for clarinet and piano, she makes a forest come alive in the moonlight.