Final Concert Agathenburg Bach Festival 2026 – Alexandra Sostmann – In Echo: Bach and His Resonances

Schloss Agathenburg, Pferdestall

26. April 2026

18:30 pm

Duration of event: 105 min

Entrance 41 Euro / reduced 21 Euro

Final Concert “Bach & now!” – Agathenburg Bach Festival 2026

Schloss Agathenburg, Pferdestall

April 26, 2026, 6:30 PM

In Echo – Bach and His Resonances

Alexandra Sostmann, piano

The final concert of the Agathenburg Bach Festival on April 26 is dedicated to a musical dialogue across centuries, beginning with the Preludes and Fugues from the second book of The Well-Tempered Clavier by Johann Sebastian Bach. This work stands among the most significant in music history and continues to fascinate through its clarity, depth, and compositional mastery. Within its cosmos of polyphonic voices, Bach appears as an architect of a musical order that extends far beyond his time.

At the heart of the program lies the idea of “echo”: Bach as the origin of a musical way of thinking that is taken up, developed, and transformed by later composers—not through imitation, but as a living continuation in sound, color, and expression.

The dramaturgy of the concert is conceived as a series of contrasts. Bach’s Preludes and Fugues—marked by inner logic, clarity, and structural rigor—are set alongside Preludes of the 19th and 20th centuries. These appear as musical moments, states of being, and concentrated expressions of atmosphere.

In the music of Frédéric Chopin, the polyphonic idea is distilled into an intimate, highly concentrated form. His Preludes open dense emotional spaces in which structural clarity and expressive depth meet within the smallest dimensions.

Alexander Scriabin gradually dissolves the clear architectural design. Voices begin to float, harmony becomes more fluid. Yet the echo of Bach remains—as a subtle network of relationships within sound.

In the Preludes of Sergei Rachmaninov, the musical space expands. Polyphonic lines merge into richly layered textures, emerging and receding like voices within a vast, breathing organism.

A particularly conscious return to Bach is found in Dmitri Shostakovich’s cycle Op. 87. Here, the principle of Prelude and Fugue is directly taken up and transformed into a modern, often existentially charged musical language. Polyphony becomes a means of expressing inner tension—between clarity and rupture.

Thus, the program presents Bach not only as a historical point of departure, but as a living idea: a form of musical thinking in which structure and expression are inseparably intertwined—and whose echo continues to resonate in the sound worlds of later composers.

“Thoughtful, yet never heavy-handed is her Bach playing—measured, that is: always finding the right balance, and thus always appropriate, always carefully considered, always full of care and therefore of natural clarity, imbued with immense serenity, yet always with a trembling inner tension. Above all, however: consistently vibrant, singing, at times taut or gently swinging—yet always compelling.”

Rainer W. Janka, Klassik Heute

Program