DUO Stephanie and Saar: Bach Crossings

Bach Crossings, a first release for DUO Stephanie and Saar on New Focus Recordings, is a crossing of paths, crossing of minds and inspirations. The music of Johann Sebastian Bach is recast and given new light by one of the most creative living composers of our time, György Kurtág, and one who is obsessed with Bach. As is fashionable these days, the release event for Bach Crossings took place at Le Poisson Rouge on March 11. In addition to being drop dead gorgeous if totally anachronistic, these performances and arrangements explain what "voicing" is in Bach (i.e., how to hear the voice with the melody among all the other notes), setting off the high radiant in Bach. Here is voicing in practice rather than just in theory: the sound is both modern and grand, strange yet familiar, just the thing for jaded Bachians. At the end the Duo throw in two Kurtág arrangements of Frescobaldi at his most delectable.

-Laurence Vittes, March 31, 2012

Piano duo Stephanie Kai-Win Ho and Saar Ahuvia have previously explored a wide range of music for both two pianos and one piano, from works by Guillaume de Machaut to Olivier Messiaen's epic Visions de l'Amen. It is clear from the precision and elegant phrasing on this disc that this is a tight partnership between two pianists who have developed an implicit understanding of each other's musicality. The articulation is clear and bright, and the pianists capture the lively spirit of the dance-like sections with character and class, evoking joyful images of tankard-swilling, pot-bellied revellers. The playing is well balanced between the two parts and there is a strong overall sense of musical line, with the lilting interactions and echoes finely balanced. Most of the transcriptions are by György Kurtág, with additional pieces by Franz Xaver Gleichauf and Max Reger.

May/June 2012

This oddly named piano duo -- husband and wife Stephanie Ho and Saar Ahuvia -- named their recent album Bach Crossings (New Focus) in part because its Bach transcriptions for four hands by Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag so often required them to cross arms while sitting side by side at a single piano. This lively concise recording does nothing to obscure Bach's indelible melodies (most of the pieces are cantats, so the transcriptions required editorial decisions), but it still feels very different from conventional performances of the same music: Kurtag provides a modern sensibility and heightened harmonic splendor, while Ho and Ahuvia bring a less rigid sense of time and rhythm. 

- Peter Margasek, July 2012

Bach Crossings, a first release for Duo Stephanie and Saar on New Focus Recordings, is a crossing of paths, minds and inspirations. The music of Bach, the colossus of Western music, is made over with a new perspective by György Kurtág (born 1926, Lugoj, Romania), one of the foremost living composers of our time.

The artists are husband and wife pianists. Saar Ahuvia studied at the Rubin Academy of Music, Tel Aviv University and Switzerland's Schaufhausen Conservatory before moving to Baltimore, Maryland, to pursue a Graduate Performance Diploma with Leon Fleisher at Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins University. A native of Israel, Mr Ahuvia was awarded the America-Israel Cultural Foundation Scholarship for the uncommon period of ten consecutive years. Solo recital engagements have taken him to Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Prague, Moscow, Zürich, Paris, Barcelona and cities of the US Eastern seaboard.

Mrs Ahuvia; Stephanie Kai-Win Ho (Taipei, Taiwan), grew up in Portland, Oregon before completing intensive courses in religion, philosophy and piano performance at Oberlin College, Ohio and a Masters in Music at Northwestern University, Illinois. She received a Graduate Performance Diploma from Peabody Institute, under the guidance of Julian Martin (Juilliard); artistic director Valencia International Piano Academy 2012.

While in Baltimore she actively premiered and performed new music as a member of Peabody Camerata while her recitals have been heard in the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Spain, Canada and many parts of the US.

An interest in programming unconventional, thought-provoking repertoire has led Duo Stephanie and Saar to explore a wide variety of works from Guillame de Machaut to Olivier Messiaen's monumental Visions de l'Amen, as well as their own four-hand transcription of A Time for Love by jazz pianist Bill Evans.

In keeping with 21st century fashion the release event for Bach Crossings took place at 'Le Poisson Rouge' (often referred to as LPR), a music venue and multimedia art cabaret founded by Justin Kantor and David Handler (2008) on the former site of The Village Gate, New York City -- where Stephanie and Saar have made their home.

The title 'Crossings' is a reference to the tricky hand crossings Kurtág asks of the pianists during his four hand transcriptions. On Track 1, Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit from Cantata BWV 106, the melody is played entirely with the arms crossed.

July 2012

Two of these pieces are arranged by Gleichauf, one by Max Reger, and the rest by Gyorgy Kurtág. In his piano transcriptions of music from the cantatas and organ works of J.S. Bach, Kurtág engages the music of Bach with persuasiveness and a controlled sense of voicing that is simply not found among other such arrangements. I like the recording very much—natural piano sound, soft, vibrant, and played with a lot of style. The two performers are both resident at the Peabody Conservatory and have been exploring many of the wider regions of the two-piano repertory.

The pieces, mostly chorale preludes, are stunningly rendered and beautifully conceived. I have seldom heard such fine arrangements, hinting at the true Baroque world that is Bach while at the same time peppering the music with a dose of modern sensibility that soothes the soul in a remarkable way. The album has its name because of the number of hand crossings that the performers have to negotiate during the playing of many of these works. I can’t imagine that anyone, Bach purist or modernist, would object to such persuasive playing. One thing though—the short timing is irritating, and at full price a detriment to my giving it four stars—40 minutes in my book is not acceptable, but I certainly can recommend this recording on its other merits.

When György Kurtág sets out to transcribe Bach for himself and his wife to play on the piano, something special happens: the fragile wit of Kurtág is married to the eternal genius of Bach and, unbelievably, something even greater than the individual parts emerges. Piano duo Stephanie Ho and Saar Ahuvia must feel similarly about them, focusing on Kurtág transcriptions (alongside some of Reger et al.), in their delightful album, Bach Crossings. The performances are a few percentage points short of perfection, but the music isn’t. Bach–Kurtág is a bit like getting God injected into the ears.

– Jens F. Laurson, Listen