Plays Bach

Johannes Tonio Kreusch Plays Bach" closes a circle. The 51-year-old, who today is one of the most renowned classical guitarists, guitar didacts and festival organizers, had first practiced purposefully as a teenager - "when I discovered how beautifully Bach sounds on the guitar," as he reports. And when he first studied philosophy at the beginning of his career, it was Bach again that led the then 24-year-old Kreusch back to his instrument and into studies at Salzburg's Mozarteum and New York's Juilliard School. "Johannes Tonio Kreusch Plays Ginastera, Bach, Brouwer" was the title of the debut album by the then 23-year-old guitarist. Which also hints at where Kreusch then swarmed out to: South American and Latin American music became his specialty. He established himself with his groundbreaking interpretations of Heitor Vil-la-Lobos; "El Manisero" is the name of his CD released last year, which he recorded as a duo with the recently deceased, legendary Brazilian colleague Carlos Barbosa-Lima, who thus left behind a final legacy of genius. In the meantime, however, his range became broader step by step, experi-ments with timbre and improvisation were added more and more, as on his fantasy "Siddhartha", inspired by Hermann Hesse. It is only logical that Kreusch now finds his way back to Bach, as Glenn Gould once said: "My love for Bach made me become a musician. Because the formal and emotional expressiveness of music begins and ends with Johann Sebastian Bach. Because he can be interpreted in so many different ways like perhaps no other composer, as a look at the sometimes diametrically opposed recordings from Gould to Gulda proves.