Washington | Claire-Marie Le Guay, Piano solo

The Embassy of France in the USA

in partnership with

The French American Piano Society

Presents

Claire-Marie Le Guay, Piano solo

“Bach, Up Close”,

Works by Bach, Escaich and Vivaldi.

From Orchestra to Keyboard: The Art of Reduction and Transformation

Throughout music history, the keyboard has served not only as an instrument of intimacy, but as a powerful lens through which orchestral and concertante works are reimagined. Long before the age of recordings, transcription was an essential act of transmission—allowing complex, large-scale compositions to circulate, to be studied, and to live beyond the concert hall.

Johann Sebastian Bach elevated this practice to an art form. By reducing concertos originally conceived for violin, organ, or ensemble to the keyboard, he did not merely condense the music; he revealed its inner architecture. Orchestral dialogues are recast into layered counterpoint, rhythmic propulsion is absorbed into the hands of a single performer, and timbral contrasts are translated into touch, articulation, and register. What is lost in color is gained in clarity, structure, and immediacy.

These keyboard transcriptions occupy a unique space between chamber music and symphonic thought. The piano becomes an orchestra in miniature—capable of sustaining cantabile lines, projecting rhythmic vitality, and suggesting multiple instrumental voices simultaneously. Later composers and transcribers, from Romantic virtuosi to contemporary musicians such as Florian Noack, have continued this tradition, expanding its expressive and technical horizons while remaining faithful to the original spirit of the works.

In this program, orchestral and concertante masterpieces are refracted through the prism of the keyboard. Heard in their distilled form, they invite the listener to engage more directly with the compositional core—melody, harmony, rhythm, and form—while celebrating the piano’s extraordinary ability to encompass the breadth of the orchestral imagination within a single instrument.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
Partita No. 1 in B-flat major, BWV 825 (20’)

Johann Sebastian Bach
Fantasy and Fugue in A minor, BWV 922 (7’)

Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) / Johann Sebastian Bach
Largo e spiccato from the Concerto in D minor, BWV 596 (after Vivaldi) (4’)

Antonio Vivaldi / Johann Sebastian Bach
Concerto in B minor for Four Keyboards — I. Allegro
(transcription by Florian Noack) (4’)

Antonio Vivaldi / Johann Sebastian Bach
Largo from the Violin Concerto in G major, BWV 973 (3’)

Thierry Escaich (b. 1965)
Aria (3’)

Thierry Escaich
Étude baroque No. 2 (3’)

Johann Sebastian Bach
Italian Concerto in F major, BWV 971 (11’)