Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 01/28/2011, uploaded on 01/28/2011

Musician's or Publisher's Notes
Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata No. 2 in c-minor was likely composed between 1709 and 1711, certainly no later than 1714 making it among Bach's earliest works.  This work uses the North German-style of toccata of Buxtehude, with alternations between improvisatory and fugal sections, as its model, which differs greatly from the Prelude/Toccata and Fugue combinations that dominate Bach's later well-known organ repertoire.  This manualiter (hands-only) toccata is a continuous stream of music; the opening fantasy blends into the adagio and then into the fugue.

The head of Bach's rather conventional fugue subject is based on a nearly unadorned broken triad. After several minutes Bach interrupts the fugue with a brief fantasia-like passage reminiscent of the opening, and then resumes the fugue, in the original key, with few changes from the first section. The piece ends with a slow section followed by a rapid finale, both in a free-composed form, to round out the composition.       Tomo Matsuo