Ravinia 2019, Issue 7, Week 14

24 RAVINIA MAGAZINE | AUGUST 26, 2019 – MAY 9, 2020 A lot of themusic I love lives at the intersection of the algorithmic and spiritual. That, tome, is really the genius of Bach, knowing how to negotiate that balance. T E P F E R , who was born to American parents and grew up in France speaking French and English, began classical piano studies at age 6 at Paris’s Conservatoire Paul Dukas, which was named after the famed composer of The Sorcerer’s Ap- prentice . A few years later, the aspiring pianist was already playing works by Bach, the bedrock Baroque composer who has inspired in some way nearly composer who has come after him. Inventions/Reinventions takes Tepfer back to those conservatory roots. In fact, it is the third step in an extraordinary Bach trajectory that began in 2009 with a solo recording titled Twelve Free Im- provisations in Twelve Keys . It was a kind of take-off on Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier , two sets of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys, and Dmitri Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues, which the Russian composer wrote in 1950–51 on the model of Bach’s earlier masterwork. Those two compo- sitions, which Tepfer greatly admires, taught him that the basic element of mu- sical keys can be a powerful creative tool, one that he put to use in his own jazz-in- fused way in Twelve Free Improvisations . “In some ways, this new project is a way of reinvestigating that earlier project but in a much more mature way,” he says of Inventions/Reinventions . Tepfer continued his Bach trajectory with what has been the most important component so far, Goldberg Variations/ Variations . (He tells the in-depth story of his journey with the variations in an essay posted on his website.) The land- mark work by Bach on which it drew has been recorded by scores of pianists, none of the releases more famous than the two versions by Canadian pianist Glenn Gould from 1955 and 1981. Other jazz pianists, including John Lewis and Uri Caine, have used these variations as improvisatory starting points, but few, if any, have done it with same level of am- bition as Tepfer. The pianist had been studying the “Goldberg Variations” for more than 10 years, memorizing them gradually and just naturally improvising as he went along. “It just felt like it was too tempt- ing not to,” Tepfer says. When he finally recorded the entire set of double varia- tions, he considered it what he called a “concept album,” not a project he was expecting to perform publicly. But then it drew plaudits from both classical and jazz critics, and presenters clamored to have him to play the set on their stages. “Suddenly I was faced with having to per- form this project,” he says, “which is in- credibly difficult. Just playing the ‘Gold- bergs’ on their own is a big challenge to any pianist, even the best pianists. Doing that with improvisations is a big mental challenge.” The other big surprise for Tepfer has been the continuing demand for perfor- mances of Goldberg Variations/Varia- tions eight years after the recording de- buted. “I would never have expected to still be doing it,” he says, “and yet here I am, and actually I’m very happy to be. As everyone who plays the ‘Goldbergs’ soon learns, it’s a project that is as deep and fulfilling as you make it. It will follow you wherever you go.” Because of his close relationship with the “Goldberg Variations,” Tepfer decid- ed to study musical counterpoint—the centuries-old art of overlapping melo- dies according to fixed rules—with a private teacher in New York, Paul Caputo, from 2013 through ’16. He wanted to develop a deeper understand- ing of Baroque harmony so that he could apply that knowledge to his improvised variations, making them more stylisti- cally attuned to the originals and giving them even greater depth. He has brought those same new- found insights into tonal harmony to JOSH GOLEMAN