Jayson Gillham ROMANTIC BACH

"The thing about Bach," says Jayson, "is that it works so well on whatever instrument combination you put it on. It's something to do with the way Bach thinks, and the way he writes the music – the content is more important than the timbre of the instrument that it's played on. And so it's really effective on all instruments – particularly the piano."

This new album features 11 of Bach's works transcribed and arranged by great pianists and pianist-composers. Rachmaninov adds contrapuntal grandeur to the Violin Partita in E major, while Myra Hess is much more intimate in her arrangement of 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring'. From Busoni to Grainger, each adds a new layer of meaning to Bach's work, and Gillham in turn allows himself more artistic freedom than one might in interpreting a contemporary score. "In many ways," he says, "the act of performing Bach's original keyboard music on the modern piano is itself transcription." The resulting album is a true Bach recital, exploring the interconnection between works and asserting the composer's ability to speak across the ages.