NImbus Alliance releases Bach-Centricity: Concertos, Trios & Sonatas arranged for two harpsichords, with David Ponsford and David Hill, on 3 January 2025 (NI 6454).
All the concertos, trios and sonatas on this recording are in some way associated with J. S. Bach, being composed, arranged, transcribed or copied by the composer. All are in the BWV catalogue; most have positive links with Bach’s first important appointment as Court Organist and Chamber Musician at the Ducal Court in Weimar (1708-1714).
The value of such arrangements is that they allow a wider perception into a composer’s compositional processes, and which have the potential for presenting new insights and different characteristics to particular pieces of music, which might not be evident in the originals. Hence these arrangements extend a practice that was normal in the early eighteenth century, and in this recording, they are played on instruments with which Bach would have been entirely familiar. What revelations they reveal! © David Ponsford
‘The Two Davids’, as they have sometime been called, began playing together in 2020 when they recorded Bach’s Six Organ Trio Sonatas (NI 6403) on two harpsichords. This recording elicited the following review in Choir & Organ: ‘The recording conveys a compelling sense of dialogue and sociability between two virtuoso musicians, equally at one with the material, and the alternation between instruments makes great sense of Bach’s antiphony and repeats.’ Since then they have played at the St Albans and Cambridge Festivals, as well as for music societies in various parts of the country, including The Athenaeum Club in London. © David Ponsford
David Ponsford
David Ponsford is an organist, harpsichordist, musicologist and conductor, and an authority on keyboard music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries… David has an extensive discography, having recorded all four parts of J. S. Bach’s Clavierübung, the complete series of Bach violin sonatas with Jacqueline Ross, ‘Parthenia’ (1612), and the complete Handel recorder sonatas with Alan Davis… In March 2024 he was awarded The Medal of the Royal College of Organists, its highest honour, ‘in recognition of distinguished achievement in organ performance and scholarship’.
David Hill
Renowned for his fine musicianship, David Hill is widely respected as an organist, conductor and educator. He has held positions as Organist of Westminster Cathedral, Winchester Cathedral and St John’s College, Cambridge. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists when he was 17 whilst studying at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester… He has given recitals since he was 10 years old and continues to do so. Away from the organ world, David operates a busy life as a freelance musician… as Musical Director of The Bach Choir, London, Music Director of the Leeds Philharmonic Society, Associate Guest Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and from 2013-24 he was Professor and Principal Conductor of Schola Cantorum, Yale University… He has made a number of discs as an organist, and a recent recording from Peterborough Cathedral was nominated as Critic’s Choice in the American Record Guide in 2021.
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