Johann Sebastian Bach, Adriana Hölszky

Cellist Julius Berger and accordionist Stefan Hussong place three works by Adriana Hölszky between Bach's three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord, BWV 1027-1029. The accordion takes the harpsichord part, and the cello plays the gamba line on gut strings. The idea behind the programme is that the newest music, far from contradicting the old, can open surprising ways into it.

Berger was born in Augsburg in 1954 and studied with Antonio Janigro. Hussong, a pupil of Hugo Noth, teaches at the music university in Würzburg. Hölszky, born in Bucharest in 1953, has lived in Germany since 1976. The Bach sonatas were recorded in January and February 2001 in the concert hall of Salem International College in Überlingen. The Hölszky works followed in November 2003 in the former reading room of the monastery of St. Mang in Füssen. Bernhard Hanke was the engineer and Andreas Ballstaedt wrote the booklet notes. Berger plays a cello by Giovanni Battista Rogeri (Brescia, 1723) with a bow by Tourte (Paris, around 1800); Hussong's accordion is a Giovanni Gola of 1968.

The disc opens with Wolke und Mond (Cloud and Moon, 1996) for cello and accordion, twelve minutes long. Miserere for accordion (1991/92) stands between the second and the third sonata in the running order. The programme closes with Nouns to Nouns II for solo cello (1983), a sequence of nine very short pieces lasting six minutes in all. The Bach is heard in the order G major, G minor and D major, so that BWV 1029, the longest here, comes second. Without the harpsichord's plucked attack, the bass and treble of the keyboard part are sustained by the accordion's reeds. The label's notes start from Hölszky's remark that "pieces are like seismographs". Here it is applied to all the works: music registers the ideas and circumstances of its making, and the changing ways musicians and listeners approach it.

The cover uses a reverse glass painting, Rhythmen 2, by Monika Hölszky-Wiedemann. The disc is part of the series that Schott lists as Julius Berger at Wergo.

CD, Wergo WER 6803 2, in the WERGO Concept series, released in 2005 (total time 74'31"), with a 28-page booklet.