Mark Edwards

Young Bach: The Toccatas
The North German stylus phantasticus held a powerful allure for Bach as a young virtuoso. The toccata, in particular, offered a perfect creative vehicle: full of rhapsodic flourishes, dramatic recitatives, and sudden changes of mood, and held together with intricate fugal writing. This program pairs some of Bach’s toccatas with works by Buxtehude and Reincken, the North German organists whose style Bach absorbed and made his own.