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J.S. Bach - Tranquillity

Jonathan Phillips J.S. Bach Album Cover

This CD contains music for anyone hoping to gain an overriding sense of stillness, calm, contemplation and reverence. Bach’s music has radiance, luminosity, divinity, serenity, and timeless beauty.There is tenderness and sometimes melancholy, but it is always suffused with optimism, and as Bach indicates at the end of many if not all his scores, his music is always written in the service of God.

​Bach’s music is the bedrock I have returned to over my lifetime, because it centres me and always brings me to back a genuine state of homeostasis and balance. Until recently, this part of my repertoire had remained an utterly private affair, because frankly, programming Bach for piano recitals can turn many people off. Or so I thought.

I was encouraged to share this repertoire by a friend, after playing most of it at an intimate recital in April 2019. Deeply humbled by the response, I decided it was worthwhile recording and offering my interpretation of it to the wider music loving world.

Track List

  1. Prelude in F minor, BWV 857

  2. Ich ruf du zir, BWV 639 - watch this track being performed

  3. Organ Concerto in D minor, BWV 596 - Largo 

  4. Nun Komm der Heiden Heiland, BWV 659a 

  5. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 - Aria 

  6. Prelude and Fugue in C sharp minor, BWV 849 - Prelude 

  7. Prelude and Fugue in C sharp minor, BWV 849 - Fugue

  8. Prelude in B major, BWV 868 

  9. Prelude in F sharp minor, BWV 883 

  10. Prelude in B minor, BWV 855a

  11. Organ Prelude in E minor, BWV 533 

  12. Organ Sonata No. 4 in E minor, BWV 528 - Adagio 

  13. Italian Concerto BWV 971 – Andante 

  14. English Suite No. 2 in A minor, BWV 807 – Sarabande 

  15. French Suite No. 1 in D minor, BWV 812 – Sarabande 

  16. Concerto in D min for Oboe after Marcello, BWV 974 - watch this track being performed

  17. Toccata in C major, BWV 564 - Adagio 

  18. Prelude and Fugue, BWV 853 - Prelude in E flat minor 

  19. Prelude and Fugue, BWV 853 - Fugue in D sharp minor 

  20. Prelude in B flat minor, BWV 867 

  21. Actus Tragicus, BWV 106 – Sonatina 

1:39

3:37

3:09

4:37

4:16

2:56

4:32

1:16

3:02

2:58

3:47

6:12

4:53

3:44

2:51

4:11

3:40

3:17

6:16

2:37

2:41

Total playing time 73:30

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