Music In Old Lviv. Bach and His Contemporaries

Performer:

• Jiří Stodůlka, organ (Czech Republic)

Programme:

• Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). Prelude in C minor, BWV 546
• Johann Jakob Froberger (1616–1667). Fantasy on the Theme Ut–Re–Mi–Fa–Sol–La
• Johann Sebastian Bach. O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde gross, BWV 622
• Johann Jakob Froberger. Canzona in G minor, FbWV 302
• Johann Sebastian Bach. Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott, BWV 721
• Nicolaus Bruhns (1665–1697). Great Prelude in E minor
• Johann Sebastian Bach. Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639
• Johann Sebastian Bach. Fugue in C minor, BWV 546

The concert programme is built around a simple yet striking idea: Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C minor, BWV 546, are split in two. The Prelude opens the evening, while the Fugue brings it to a close. Everything heard in between takes place within a single Bach work — like a story set inside parentheses.

And within those parentheses comes the seventeenth century and three ways of praying at the organ. Bach’s chorale settings: O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde gross, BWV 622 — slow contemplation with an ornamented melody that must be sustained with great care; Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott, BWV 721 — a plea over pulsing chords; Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639 — the same chorale Tarkovsky used in Solaris. Between them comes Johann Jakob Froberger, a composer of the generation before Bach: his Fantasy on the hexachord Ut–Re–Mi–Fa–Sol–La and Canzona in G minor, music from a time when keyboard forms were still being invented. And Nicolaus Bruhns’s Great Prelude in E minor — by an organist who died at the age of thirty-one and left behind so few works that each one is worth its weight in gold today.

Jiří Stodůlka is twenty-six. He studies in Vienna with Johannes Ebenbauer, studies improvisation with Roman Hauser, and has taken masterclasses with Olivier Latry, the titular organist of Notre-Dame. Since 2020, he has been the principal organist at St. Maurice’s Church in Olomouc, home to one of the largest historic organs in Central Europe. Someone who plays an eighteenth-century instrument every week knows things about Baroque registration that cannot be learned from the score alone.