BACH Tim Allhoff

• Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750): Prelude:
• 1 Bach: Prelude 03:43
• Matthäus-Passion, BWV 244, Pt. 1:
• 2 Bach: Matthäus-Passion, BWV 244, Pt. 1: No. 3, Choral. "Herzliebster Jesu, was hast du Verbrochen" 02:12
• Hunting Cantata, BWV 208:
• 3 Bach: Hunting Cantata, BWV 208: No. 9. Sheep May Safely Graze 05:17
• Matthäus-Passion, BWV 244, Pt. 2:
• 4 Bach: Matthäus-Passion, BWV 244, Pt. 2: No. 54, Choral. "O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden" 01:33
• Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1:
• 5 Bach: Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1: Prelude and Fugue in C-Sharp major, BWV 848: Prelude 01:26
• Matthäus-Passion, BWV 244, Pt.2:
• 6 Bach: Matthäus-Passion, BWV 244, Pt.2: No. 49, Aria. Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben 05:15
• French Suite No.5 in G Major, BWV 816:
• 7 Bach: French Suite No.5 in G Major, BWV 816: Allemande 02:30
• Total Runtime 21:56

Info for BACH

For two decades, the Munich pianist and composer Tim Allhoff has been a fixture on the German music scene. The ECHO award winner has his roots in jazz and is known for crossing genre boundaries seemingly effortlessly and elegantly. With his tenth album, he devotes himself exclusively to works by Johann Sebastian Bach and presents a purely classical recording for the first time - and for good reason, because Tim Allhoff has had the desire to record Bach since his youth. "BACH" is released on the Berlin Classics label.

Tim Allhoff has been involved with a very wide range of music throughout his career, but Bach has always been the absolute constant. At the age of ten, he encountered the works of Johann Sebastian Bach for the first time in the school choir at his Augsburg high school, and even then, this music touched him unusually strongly. The need to penetrate Bach's compositions has never left him since then. "How can something so mathematical, so full of intellectual brilliance and formal perfection, be so pure and emotionally beautiful at the same time?" asks the pianist and composer. To this day, he sees Bach as one of the greatest sources of inspiration for his work. "Bach's music goes straight to the heart and has something incredibly timeless about it," says Tim Allhoff, who is generally not a fan of genre pigeonholing. His last releases have already shown this. He is convinced: "In the end, it's always about emotion - there is only music that either touches or doesn't."

In order to express these emotions, Bach's music offers a great deal of artistic freedom despite all its strictness. "I wanted to record a Bach album in the spirit of the original compositions: Bach is strict in structure, but at the same time offers great scope in tempo and dynamics - that's where the freedom for interpretation and expression lies. Playing Bach as I feel him fascinates me," says Tim Allhoff. However, you need a certain degree of maturity to know exactly what you want to express. The selection of the repertoire to be recorded also takes time, and Tim Allhoff took his time. The album only contains pieces that are particularly close to his heart. Since not all works are available in piano transcriptions, he has created his own arrangements of his favorite arias and choral themes: "Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben" and "Wir Setzen uns mit Tränen nieder" from the St. Matthew Passion. Tim Allhoff deliberately avoided improvisation - a first in the musician's discography to date. "It was important to me not to make Bach jazzy," emphasizes Tim Allhoff. "I really wanted to play Bach in his original form, in my own way."

Only in the last two pieces does the musician leave the baroque cosmos, as an encore, so to speak. Here he arranges two well-known choral themes and packages them in a very modern sound language - "Oh Haupt voll Blut und Wunden" and "Herzliebster Jesu". In the album's booklet, Tim Allhoff describes the recording as a "deeply felt bow to a musical genius whose works are timeless and omnipresent". These words illustrate the special place that Bach has in Allhoff's life and artistic development.

Without question - Tim Allhoff is a versatile musician. He is not only a sought-after accompanist on the piano, playing with the soprano Fatma Said and star trumpeter Lucienne Renaudin-Vary, among others. He also works as an arranger and has written music for Oscar winner Rachel Portman, violinist Eldbjørg Hemsing and the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris. He can even be heard as a pianist on a track by Robbie Williams. This recording not only shows Allhoff's deep connection with Johann Sebastian Bach, but also his ability to set emotional accents in classical music.

Tim Allhoff, piano

Tim Allhoff
collaborated with renowned artists such as Jeff Ballard, Dieter Ilg, Nils Landgren, Johannes Enders, Larry Grenadier, Nils Wülker, the German Filmorchestra Babelsberg and is always a welcomed guest at many famous venues and festivals as Elbjazz, Rheingau Festival, Ingolstädter Jazztage, Schloss Elmau, Jazzfestival Burghausen to name but a few.

His Trio with with Andreas Kurz on bass and drummer Bastian Jütte released five albums since 2010, two of them beeing awarded with the prestigious ECHO award. The band further won the NEW GERMAN JAZZ AWARD.

In 2015, Allhoff presented LOVEBOX SESSIONS, his first release as a solo artist.

Tim Allhoff is prize winner of the ECHO Jazz (2010), the »Bavarian Kunstförderpreis« (2013), the »Jazzförderpreis of the City of Ingolstadt« (2010), the »Kunstförderpreis of the City of Augsburg« (2008) and won the second prize at the renowned »Gasteig Competition« in Munich. He has played and toured throughout Europe and in the USA.

Besides his work as a pianist, Tim also works as a composer and arranger. His works run the gamut from string quartet to symphonic orchestra and also contemporary music for advertisment and movie scores. In 2016, he arranged the movie score for the Hollywood Motion Picture SLEEPLESS.

In January 2019 he presents his sixth album LEPUS, featuring Andreas Kurz (bs), Bastian Jütte (dr), Lutz Häfner (sax), Arne Jansen (git), Nils Wülker (tp) und das Leopold-Mozart-string quartet.

This album contains no booklet.