AlbumRelease date:
09.09.2016
Arash Safaian, Sebastian Knauer, Pascal Schumacher, Zürcher Kammerorchester
ÜberBach
The ÜberBach album is a collection of compositions by the Munich-based composer Arash Safaian on themes by Johann Sebastian Bach. Safaian starts off with various pieces by Bach – chorales, orchestral works, organ and clavier music – and works with them to create five concertos for piano, vibraphone and chamber orchestra. These works are new compositions after Bach. Arash Safaian’s musical partner is the internationally acclaimed pianist Sebastian Knauer: “When I heard the first example of ÜberBach, I was enthusiastic about the project at once. The virtuosity of the piano part, the melodiousness of the compositions and the closely woven sound made a deep impression on me. I imagined I was listening to Bach and yet it sounded too modern for the original.” Sebastian Knauer called his long-time musical partner, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, the very next day. He organized the recording and further developed the project with Safaian. For the shimmering crystalline sound, the duo recruited the Luxembourg-born multi-percussionist Pascal Schumacher. He plays the vibraphone, which blends with the piano. There is also a synthesizer to enrich the sound of the basso continuo – for which Bach used the organ. The project centres on the idea of creating a form of music in which one hears Bach without Bach being heard. Arash Safaian develops the music ideas already contained in the compositions of Bach and interprets them anew: “For me, Bach’s works are music in its purest form. They require no deconstruction, no historical classification. What I always think is that I am hearing the grammar of music. That is why I have decided to compose music about Bach’s music. That makes it like a view into a landscape that your own eye interprets in a certain way.”

Arash Safaian
Photo: Gregor Hohenberg
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Sebastian Knauer
In 2005, East meets West, a joint project with his duo partner Daniel Hope, was awarded the ECHO Klassik and a Grammy nomination. The Hamburg Philharmonic have performed with Sebastian Knauer in a cycle of all 27 Mozart concertos and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra have played all the Haydn concertos, in each case to his direction from the keyboard. He has also performed in concert with the Dresden Staatskapelle, the NDR Symphony Orchestra, the Konzerthaus Orchestra of Berlin, Philharmonia Zürich, Camerata Salzburg, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Lucerne Festival Strings, Orchestre de Chambre de Paris and the New York City Opera Orchestra, conducted by Fabio Luisi, Thomas Hengelbrock, Neeme Järvi, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Ingo Metzmacher, John Axelrod, Simone Young, Michael Sanderling and Jaap van Zweden. An artist with a close affinity with chamber music, he has contributed to numerous projects with such impressive colleagues as the Emerson String Quartet, Philharmonia Quartett Berlin, Sol Gabetta, Sabine Meyer, singers Anne Sofie von Otter, Bernarda Fink, Michael Schade, Olaf Bär and the late Hermann Prey, and with choreographer John Neumeier and the drummer of “The Police”, Stewart Copeland. Already this century he has put together a series of Word meets Music programmes, always focusing on one composer. Sebastian Knauer creates the texts about the composer’s life, which are recited on stage by noted actors. With well over 300 appearances in this format since 2001 he regularly plays alongside Klaus Maria Brandauer, Hannelore Elsner, Martina Gedeck, Katja Riemann, Iris Berben, Gudrun Landgrebe and Barbara Auer. 2012 saw Sebastian Knauer establish his own festival, mozart@augsburg, of which he has assumed artistic direction.
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Pascal Schumacher
He played with many of exciting musicians such Francesco Tristano, Bachar Mar-Khalifé, Jef Neve, Kenny Barron & Magic Malik, wrote music for theater and film and leaded a jazz quartet. Today he mixes emotional classical music with minimal electronic sounds, although Schumacher himself considers each classification obsolete. To him, music is a single, limitless playground.
2018 also marked a new beginning for Pascal Schumacher, who upon invitation to play at Jazz & The City Festival In Salzburg, started to develop his own solo material. The experience opened up an entirely new path for the composer culminating in his debut solo album, SOL. SOL captures Schumacher’s newfound passion for solitude in all its magnetism all the while remaining true to the main characteristic of his relationship with the vibraphone; intimacy. SOL has ben released via Neue Meister in June 2020.
Pascal is a Yamaha Artist and a Professor for Jazz and Classical Percussion at the Conservatoire de Musique de Luxembourg. - He is the Artistic Director of the innovative 'Reset' Music Festival at Abbaye Neimenster and an Ambassador for SOS Children's Villages International - Luxembourg.