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Classical Album of the Week: Pianist Alan Feinberg's Fugue State

March 12, 2018. Fugue State highlights music from two centuries of keyboard composers from the High Baroque period.  Pianist Alan Feinberg interprets a musical range beginning with Danish-German composer Dieterich Buxtehude and concluding with Bach and Handel. 

While each composer has a unique and intriguing personal style, they influenced each other in ways that are not often so apparent. Several years before releasing this album, pianist Alan Feinberg recorded expressionistic versions of John Bull’s unconventional English Renaissance keyboard pieces.

In this iconoclastic collection we hear his unrestrained pianistic readings of 17th- and 18th-century composers.  In Feinberg's words, "Each fugue can be thought of as a character piece, each with its own personality, scope, level of complexity, and affect.”

The program is filled out with works by Bach's model, Buxtehude. The tracks conclude chronologically with Bach and Handel, who exhibit contrasting interior and exterior characteristics even in fugues. Nevertheless, as Feinberg notes, the various composers’ influences on each other holds true.

“The recording features some of the links and musical cross-pollination of these composers. And while fugues are generally not designed to surrender their secrets easily, there are many connections to be enjoyed by the avid listener.” —Alan Feinberg