Pianist

Hans Böhme

Johann Sebastian Bach died on the 28 July 1750. In 1751, The Art of Fuge (BWV 1080) has been published, more than likely through Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach, his son with his first wife Maria Barbara, and his student Friedrich Agricola.

The unfinished last fugue is followed by the chorale prelude Herewith I come before Thy Throne (Vor deinen Thron tret Ich hiermit), BWV 668a. In a necrology published in 1754 by Carl Emanuel Phillip Bach it is claimed that The Art of Fugue should be regarded as Bach’s last and, due to his death, incomplete composition. This has been confirmed by the Milan music professor and Bach scientist Piero Rattalino in his introduction prior to Ramin’s recording of this work of Johann Sebastian Bach. The pianio virtuoso, who lives in Crailsheim in Germany and was born in Teheran, Iran, performed this play during the pre-Easter time in the Italian cities of Milan, Rome, Bologna and Florence amongst others in solo concertos.

The main event was on the 24 March: the performance of the play under the patronage of the music association Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in the concert halls of the Parco della Musica in Rome. The artist performed several times in sold out concerts in front of 1,200 observant and competent auditors. Ramin Bahrami prepared his audience intensively during several preparing vernissages in Milan and Rome media for this play, which is regarded to be the most difficult play of Bach.

‘What else is left when someone reached both technical and spiritual the highest level in his art that can be reached by a human? He can’t rise higher, he is only a human.’ This quote is from Paul Hindemith’s famous speech ‘An engaging inheritance’ at the celebration of the 200^th anniversary of Bach’s death in Hamburg. ‘He faces the end of his life, he faces the curtain that nobody ever will pull aside again, as it said in an old Persian poem.‘ He has to pay a high price: ‘The melancholy, the pain, all previous imperfection is lost, and with them the possibility of progress.’ But Paul Hindemith also comforts us: ‘When music succeeds to bring out the best in our nature it has done the best possible. A composer defeating his music to bring out the best in the auditors has reached the highest level possible.’ Johann Sebastian Bach has reached this highest level with The Art of Fugue. Professor Rattalino in the introduction of his student Ramin Bahrami: ‘Without the chorale, neither esoteric nor legendary, The Art of Fugue today is the last gift of the educator Bach to the pianists who would like to reach for the highest spheres of their profession. Ramin Bahrami, still young, is on the right track.’

1,200 Romans and Italians from all over the country and few Bach friends from his new German home honored the artist with endless applause and broke up the strains of the incomplete Contrapunctus XlV. After three additions from Bach’s Partitions and one homage each to Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra, the fascinated audience left into the Roman midnight. At the same time a firework rose in the Roman night, thousands of golden stars on the occasion of the 50^th anniversary of the Treaties of Rome, basis for the foundation of a united Europe.

For those who are not as engaged in politics as others the firework could as well be an homage to the Lutheran Johann Sebastian Bach or - totally immodest - to this admirer Ramin Bahrami himself.

The motto of Ramin’s present life: ‘Io cerco Bach’ - ‘I search Bach’