Vol. 1
1. J. S. Bach – Erkki Melartin: Partita for solo violin in E Major BWV 1006 – Preludio
2. – 3. J. S. Bach – Karl Ekman: Prelude and Fugue in C Major BWV 531*
4. J. S. Bach – Erkki Melartin: Ich halte treulich still BWV 466
5. – 6. J. S. Bach – Karl Ekman: Prelude and Fugue in C Minor BWV 549*
7. J. S. Bach – Erkki Melartin: Freuet euch, die Christen alle BWV 40
8. – 9. J. S. Bach – Karl Ekman: Prelude and Fugue in B Minor BWV 544*
10. J. S. Bach – Erkki Melartin: Am Abend BWV 448
11. – 13. J. S. Bach – Karl Ekman: Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C Major BWV 564*
Vol. 2
1. – 2. J. S. Bach – Ilmari Hannikainen: Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor BWV 582*
3. – 4. J. S. Bach – Karl Ekman: Prelude and Fugue in F Major BWV 556*
5. J. S. Bach – Taneli Kuusisto: Prelude in E Minor BWV 555*
6. – 7. J. S. Bach – Karl Ekman: Prelude and Fugue in E Minor BWV 533*
8. J. S. Bach – Ilmari Hannikainen: Christ lag in Todesbanden BWV 625*
9. – 10. J. S. Bach – Ilmari Hannikainen: Prelude and Fugue in C Minor BWV 549*
11. J. S. Bach – Ilmari Hannikainen: Prelude in G Minor BWV 535*
12. J. S. Bach – Ilmari Hannikainen: Fugue in G Minor BWV 578*
13. – 14. J. S. Bach – Ilmari Hannikainen: Prelude and Fugue in G Minor BWV 558*
15. – 16. J. S. Bach – Ferruccio Busoni: Prelude and Fugue in E Flat Major “St. Anne”
17. J. S. Bach – Olli Mustonen: Partita for solo violin in E Major BWV 1006 – Gavotte
*First recordings
Risto-Matti Marin, piano
Recording location and dates: Kangasala Hall, Kangasala, Finland June 21–22, 2023 (Vol 1) and June 5–6, 2024 (Vol. 2)
Recordings, editing and stereo mastering: Matti Heinonen & Sofia Riippi / Pro Audile
Dolby Atmos mixing and mastering: Risto Hemmi / Finnvox Studios
Instrument: Steinway & Sons D-274, 598661
Piano Technician: Harri Mikkola
Release dates:
The whole double album available on Even Platform on Dec 18th 2025
The Vol. 1 available on streaming services on Jan 23rd 2026
The Vol. 2 available on streaming services on March 27th 2026
Finnish Bach Arrangements
Johann Sebastian Bach’s music, and especially his organ works, inspired piano virtuosos of the Romantic era, who arranged them either for their own concert use or published them for others to play. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Finnish pianists had the opportunity to come into direct contact with two notable Bach arrangers, Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) and Alexander Siloti (1863–1945).
The story of Finnish made Bach arrangements can be considered to have begun on April 2, 1890, when Ferruccio Busoni premiered his newly composed arrangement of Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E flat major “St. Anne” BWV 552. The concert was held in Helsinki at the Swedish Normal Lyceum, and Busoni’s playing was, as usual, very popular. The critic pseudonym “o” wrote in a review published in the Uusi Suometar newspaper on April 3, 1890:
“It is no easy task to create a piano piece from a piece composed for the organ that would in every way correspond to the original purpose of the piece. However, Mr. Busoni has succeeded in this perfectly. That great work by Bach sounded magnificent and Mr. B. performed it as a piece composed for the piano so perfectly that old Bach would not have had anything against that composition if a Busoni had played it for him in his time. The grateful audience rewarded Mr. Busoni’s performances with abundant applause, and after Bach’s fugue, Mr. B. kindly played one more piece as an encore.”
Martin Wegelius, the founder of the Helsinki Music Institute (later called Helsinki music school, Helsinki Conservatory and finally the Sibelius Academy), had recruited the young Busoni to the teaching staff of the institute in 1888 through music theorist Hugo Riemann. Although Busoni only spent a couple of years in Finland, his significance for the musical life of our country was great. Sibelius, the Järnefelts and other Finnish artists formed a warm friendship with Busoni. The time in Helsinki also proved to be particularly significant for Busoni, because at that time he met Gerda Sjöstrand, who would soon become his wife.
Busoni was one of the most significant pianists, composers and influential aestheticians of his era, whose booklet “A Sketch for a New Aesthetic of Music” from 1907 inspired modernists from the time of its publication. He can well be considered the greatest of Bach arrangers. Of course, e.g., Franz Liszt had arranged Bach’s music for the piano earlier, as early as the 1840s, and Bach arrangements had become an important part of the virtuoso repertoire during the 19th century. Despite his great predecessors, Busoni raised the art of arrangement to an even higher level, and his colorful and expressive Bach transcriptions were already very popular from the very beginning. Busoni’s exceptional creativity is also evident in the arrangement of “St. Anne”. His arrangement style is characterized by an exceptional understanding of the piano’s instrumental possibilities and the technique of piano playing. In Busoni’s arrangements, for example, the pedal parts of the original organ works have been seamlessly embedded into the pianistic fabric. Possible breaks in the voice leading have been covered up in the sound image with skillful pianistic solutions, and long musical lines are realized seemingly effortlessly. The changes in timbre imitating organ registrations also support the overall form wonderfully, and the triple fugue that concludes the E-flat major prelude and fugue grows towards the end into a true grand cathedral-like sonic exaltation.
In addition to the arrangement of the E-flat major prelude and fugue, Busoni, while in Helsinki, prepared an edition of Bach’s two-part inventions, which he dedicated to the Helsinki Music Institute. The edition was later published as part of the large Bach–Busoni complete edition by the Breitkopf & Härtel publishing house. I have not included the inventions in this complete recording, because Busoni’s creative transcriptional contribution to them is not very great, although his work was pedagogically significant.
Born in Kaarina, the son of a cantor of the local church, Karl Ekman (1869–1947) had begun his piano studies in Turku under the guidance of his namesake Vivika Ekman, until he moved to Helsinki to become Busoni’s student. Later, Ekman continued his studies in Vienna, where he was taught by Alfred Grünfeld (1852–1924). This elegant Viennese virtuoso also later taught the composer-pianist Selim Palmgren and Ilmari Hannikainen’s teacher Elli Rängman-Björlin.
It is not certain whether Ekman was present at Busoni’s April 1890 concert, but one could imagine that he probably heard either that concert or another concert given by Busoni a week later in the hall of the University of Helsinki. Both programs featured a brand-new arrangement of the Prelude and Fugue in E flat major. Perhaps his teacher’s example partly encouraged Ekman to arrange Bach’s music for the piano. Of course, due to his family background, he had been surrounded by Bach’s organ music all his life, and studied organ playing at the Helsinki Music Institute under the direction of Richard Faltin (1835–1918), the principal organist of St. Nicholas’ Church (now Helsinki Cathedral). Arrangements were also characteristic of Ekman. In addition to Bach’s works, he made numerous arrangements, especially of Finnish folk songs and Sibelius’ vocal and orchestral works.
Ekman later became the first Finnish-born head piano teacher at the Helsinki Music Institute. He thus ended up in the same position that Busoni had previously held. In addition, Ekman served as rector of the Helsinki Conservatory in 1907–1911, and then as conductor of the Turku Musical Society in 1912–1920. However, he became known to the general public especially as a pianist for his wife, the soprano Ida Ekman (1875–1942). Together they gave concerts not only at home but also abroad, such as at the Paris World Exhibition in 1900 and at the Berlin Bach Festival a year later. Ida Ekman, who was Sibelius’s favorite singer, also made numerous recordings of Sibelius’ songs with the assistance of Karl Ekman. Unfortunately, there are no solo recordings of Ekman’s playing, but the third movement of Schubert’s Trout Quintet has survived in the archives of the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation. In it, Ekman’s playing can be heard as a sovereign chamber musician.
Karl Ekman’s Bach arrangements could be described as elegant and, in a “Lutheran” way, unadornedly devout. Ekman may not imitate organ registrations quite as lushly as Busoni, but on the other hand, Ekman is considerably more faithful to Bach’s original text, and the ethos of his arrangements reaches the sublimity of the original works. Despite their apparent simplicity, Ekman’s arrangements sound elegant and are stylistically consistent – none of Ekman’s solutions strike the ear as musically slovenly. This can be seen especially if you compare Ekman’s arrangement of the B minor prelude and fugue BWV 544 with Liszt’s transcription of the same work. Liszt’s arrangement has both many virtuoso moments that stand out too much from their surroundings and unnecessarily thinly written and sonically barren sections, and the expression does not seem to serve the drama of the original work. Ekman’s arrangement of the B minor prelude and fugue is overall more fulfilling than Liszt’s.
A point of comparison between Busoni and Ekman is provided by the Toccata, Adagio and Fugue. Busoni had composed his own arrangement of the same work in 1900, and Ekman composed his a few years later. It is impossible to know why Ekman wanted to arrange the same work as his world-famous teacher. However, there are significant differences in the arrangements, which even raise the question of whether Ekman knew Busoni’s arrangement before he started making his own? Ekman dedicated his arrangement to Richard Faltin and the publishing house A. Apostol published it in 1910. Ekman’s later arrangements were published by Fazer Publishing House.
In the Toccata, Ekman uses the variation of different octaves as an effect more sparingly than Buson, but on the other hand he has already added many octave triplings along the opening section, which create a more massive impression. Elsewhere, Ekman’s arrangement is mainly easier to play technically and the musical lines are realized in a streamlined manner, but in the adagio section Ekman has kept the difficult-to-play middle part voices in the original octaves, which makes some of the playing more challenging than Busoni’s. The difference between the two arrangers is particularly evident at the end of the adagio section, where Busoni has used large passages and creatively solved the problem of playing broad chords by giving up the coherence of the voice leading to some extent. Ekman, on the other hand, has kept to the almost original texture, even though it has required the use of many bass octave grace notes. The fugue in Ekman’s arrangement is clearly written more lightly than in Busoni’s version, and thus easier to keep in an airy character, but it is still full of pianistically interesting solutions. Ekman himself played the arrangement in his concerts, and after him, Finnish pianist composer Ernst Linko, among others, performed it.
Karl Ekman compiled his own collection of “31 small preludes and fugues” based on the pedagogical Bach collection of the Italian pianist Bruno Mugellini (1871–1912), which became familiar to many generations of Finnish pianists. Although it contains arrangements of e.g., the parts of Bach’s lute works, (transcribed by either Mugellini or Ekman), I have not included them in this complete recording due to their mainly pedagogical nature.
Erkki Melartin (1875–1937) was a prolific composer who, especially as a symphonist, unfortunately was overshadowed by Sibelius and couldn’t reach international attention. Melartin’s piano output is also extensive and clearly shows the composer’s journey from late Romanticism to the modern trends of the early 20th century. Teaching was also an important part of his musical activity. Melartin’s teaching was highly regarded, which was partly due to the respect Melartin showed for his students. Melartin’s both religious and universally humanistic worldview is perfectly reflected in the collection of aphorisms “I Believe” (Credo), op. 150. Melartin succeeded Karl Ekman as rector of the Helsinki Conservatory in 1911, and served in this position until 1936. He was also involved in founding the Finnish Music Pedagogics Union in 1925. Illness marked Melartin’s life since childhood, but despite health problems, he was able to work in an astonishingly diverse and productive way for the benefit of Finnish music life.
Melartin first met Busoni during his student days, in 1898. His teacher Martin Wegelius invited Melartin to show him his recently completed works, the Marionnettes four-hand series and the Variations and Fugue Op. 2, which Melartin had dedicated to his friend Selim Palmgren. Tuire Ranta-Meyer, who has written a comprehensive biography of Melartin, describes the meeting as follows:
“Busoni received Melartin on the fourth floor of the Kämp Hotel, where the Bach fugue he had been practicing could be heard echoing in the corridors. Busoni asked questions and persuaded Melartin to play the Marionnettes series with him, which he was very pleased with. […] Variationen und fuge, which Busoni played brilliantly directly from the manuscript, was more to his liking, and he considered it excellent and original” (Ranta-Meyer 2025, pp. 73–74)
The meeting left Melartin with a warm impression of Busoni, and they met later, for example in connection with concerts and at invitations organized by Martin Wegelius. However, there was no actual collaboration or a longer teacher-student relationship between them.
Melartin composed four Bach arrangements for piano in the 1920s, and later assigned the entity the opus number 157. In this album, I have used the original Bach catalogue numbers for the sake of clarity, and scattered them here and there in the program. The order given by Melartin in his opus was:
- Ich halte treulich still
- Am Abend
- Freuet euch, die Christen alle
- Präludium
However, it is uncertain whether Melartin intended the arrangements to be performed in this order or as a series at all. Rather, it seems that he wanted to give these otherwise separate arrangements a place in his catalogue, and the numbering is mainly a formality.
Whereas three of these Melartin arrangements are quite serene and devotional in nature, and the original works are Bach’s spiritual songs or chorale sections of cantatas, the fourth is a very virtuosic and lively arrangement of the opening preludio of the E major solo violin partita. Melartin was not a performing virtuoso himself, so perhaps he had in mind one of his friends, such as Selim Palmgren, Karl Ekman – or even Busoni himself, as the performer. Later, Sergei Rachmaninov made a transcription of this same movement, which is probably the most performed arrangement of the preludio. Practically the same music is also found in Bach’s Cantata Overture BWV 29. It was arranged for piano by, among others, Camille Saint-Saëns and Wilhelm Kempff, whom Melartin knew personally since 1923. It is not known whether they knew each other’s arrangements of the same music.
Three other of Melartin’s Bach arrangements are devotional in nature, and were apparently used as ceremonial music for the Finnish Rosicrucian Society founded by the theosophist Pekka Ervast. Melartin had been a member of the Finnish Theosophical Society, also led by Ervast, since 1910, and joined the Rosicrucian Order right around the time of its founding in 1923. Theosophy formed an important framework for his worldview. Melartin dedicated two of these devotional Bach arrangements to the opera singer Ilta Ekroos (1847–1928), in whose home Finnish artists often gathered. Melartin gave his third Bach arrangement the title Am Abend, which does not originate from Bach. This may have been a play on words: Ilta = evening (Finnish), and Abend = evening (German).
Ilmari Hannikainen (1892–1955) was the most important Finnish pianist of the early 20th century and also an important composer. Ilmari Hannikainen studied piano under his mother and composition under his father, until his studies were continued in 1911 at the Helsinki Music Institute (now the Sibelius Academy). There he was taught piano by one of the great Finnish pianists of that era, Elli Rängman-Björlin, who had studied under Ekman and Grünfeld as well as Liszt’s student Alfred Reisenauer. Hannikainen’s composition teacher was Erkki Melartin.
The earliest of Hannikainen’s Bach arrangements is his combination of the prelude BWV 535 and fugue BWV 578 in G minor. The first version of the arrangement dates from 1913. Hannikainen performed his arrangement throughout his career, and the last corrections to the manuscript probably date from around 1948. Hannikainen received additional impetus for making Bach arrangements from Liszt’s student Alexander Siloti. Hannikainen studied under Siloti in St. Petersburg in 1916–1917. After Siloti fled to Finland during the Russian Revolution, the collaboration with Hannikainen continued with two piano concerts. They performed together, for example, at London’s Wigmore Hall on October 30, 1920. Siloti had been a student of Liszt, and under his leadership Hannikainen became a part of that significant pianistic legacy. The support of Siloti and Sibelius opened the doors to an international career for Hannikainen, which unfortunately remained more modest than expected due to the turmoil in the world and Hannikainen’s personal life circumstances.
A characteristic feature of Hannikainen’s Bach arrangements is the bold use of the piano’s extreme registers. This can be seen in the sparkling treble parts of the C minor prelude and fugue, for example, as well as in the dark bass coloring of the chorale overture Christ lag in Todesbanden. Hannikainen had a strong personal relationship with Bach’s music, and sometimes, when he felt overburdened in his position as a professor at the Sibelius Academy, he dreamed of changing to cantorship.
The greatest and most beautiful of Hannikainen’s Bach arrangements is the organ passacaglia in C minor, a stylistically intact and well-balanced arrangement. In it, Hannikainen uses all his pianistic knowledge and is able to incorporate the complex polyphony of the original work into his arrangement in a very creative and, from a pianistic point of view, astonishingly natural way. Busoni considered the passacaglia impossible to arrange satisfactorily for piano, but Hannikainen has succeeded in this task in an exemplary manner.
The difference in the arranger personalities of Ilmari Hannikainen and Karl Ekman is very evident when comparing their arrangements of the same Bach C minor prelude and fugue BWV 549. Ekman sticks quite close to the original musical text, and has skillfully written the long bass organ points of the prelude in such a way that they can be tied with the middle pedal of the grand piano. This creates a very accurate overall impression of polyphonic layers. Hannikainen’s “ace”, on the other hand, is imitating the registrations, somewhat like Busoni. He spreads the text much more freely than Ekman does on different sides of the keyboard. On the other hand, Ekman’s bowing markings are more detailed and articulate, while Hannikainen favors long bows, and often “sempre legato”-type markings. Hannikainen’s arrangements exude the author’s experiences on large performance stages. The gestures are large and the contrasts between the different registrations are emphasized. It is somewhat paradoxical that the style of Ekman’s arrangements resembles more Siloti’s more reserved approach to Bach’s music than the Busoni’s “grand style”, which Hannikainen seems to be aiming for in his arrangements.
The last of Hannikainen’s Bach arrangements is the transcription of the G minor prelude and fugue BWV 558, written in 1951. This wonderfully restrained and elegant arrangement reveals again the author’s subtle understanding of the piano’s sonic possibilities. The more reserved expression than in other Hannikainen arrangements does justice to the original work.
At the time of writing, the scores for Ilmari Hannikainen’s piano arrangements have not yet been published.
Taneli Kuusisto (1905 – 1988) was one of Finland’s significant organists, composers and musical influences of the post-World War II period. He studied piano playing under Ilmari Hannikainen and composition as a student of Erkki Melartin. Kuusisto was taught organ by Elis Mårtenson. In addition to his career as a composer, Kuusisto taught liturgical organ playing and the history of organ music at the Sibelius Academy, and held numerous positions of trust, including as rector of the Sibelius Academy in 1959–1971.
Kuusisto’s only Bach arrangement for solo piano represents the Romantic style, although as a composer he had already moved away romanticism towards neoclassical expression. In his arrangement of the Organ Prelude in E minor BWV 555, the piano’s sound shimmers with mystical beauty, and it is a real pity that Kuusisto did not make more solo piano arrangements. Perhaps at that time they were considered a phenomenon of the past.
From the vaults to everyone’s delight
As the content of this album partly suggests, the spectrum of Finnish piano music was already broader and richer during the Romantic period than general presentations of music history have traditionally suggested. In addition to the piano miniatures known to the public, large and ambitious solo piano works, concertos, and virtuoso arrangements written for concert use were also made. Why were these larger-scale works and arrangements so largely forgotten? And why, for example, were Ilmari Hannikainen’s Bach arrangements not printed, even though the layout of Hannikainen’s manuscripts shows that he had prepared them for publication? In my opinion, there could have been at least two clear reasons for this: commercial and aesthetic.
The average level of Finnish piano playing in the early 20th century was quite modest, although top performers emerged. It was worth it for domestic publishers to focus on small-scale and technically reasonable works that amateurs could play. Perhaps the great works and virtuoso numbers were more easily left unpublished because there was not enough commercial demand for them. However, this does not fully explain the low popularity of the Bach arrangements, because most of them were published at the time. For example, all of Melartin’s and Ekman’s Bach arrangements were published during their lifetimes.
The attitude towards arrangements and works from the Romantic period changed during the 20th century. The post-war era of modernism did not really appreciate Romantic rarities. Piano arrangements in particular were seen as worthless fabrications, sometimes even outright forgeries. The authenticity movement, which studied and strongly promoted the historical performance practices of early music, sought to cleanse the mannerisms of the Romantic period from Bach performances as well. However, this noble goal also gave rise to a narrow-minded purism. It was even questioned whether it was possible to play Baroque music on the piano at all, since it is not an original Baroque instrument. Bach transcriptions were extremely “inauthentic” from this point of view. As a result, the arrangements were generally left out of most pianists’ repertoires. An example of how romanticism could be seen as a negative designation is the review of Ilmari Hannikainen’s concert written by the pseudonym “S.P-n.” for the Hufvudstadsbladet newspaper on November 30, 1950:
“People also enjoyed Hannikainen’s rather romantic Bach transcription – some expert could have pointed out that this lacks genuine baroque style.”
In his scrapbook, Hannikainen has written, clearly indignantly, next to this review:
“How can you think that Bach’s chorales, for example, should be performed in baroque style? When playing Bach, you have to use a large stylistic range. For example, French and English series have to be performed in baroque – rococo style. I.H.”
Perhaps by the 1950s, Bach arrangements seemed old-fashioned to publishers, and Hannikainen’s arrangements were therefore not printed. Further research would be needed to clarify this. The attitude towards the legacy of the Romantic era has become more favorable again towards the end of the 20th century, and the transcription genre has also become popular again among piano virtuosos. It has also become more acceptable to even play with the compositions of the great masters, and there is not always a need for excessive seriousness. A good example of this is Olli Mustonen’s (b. 1967) arrangement of the gavotte movement of Bach’s E major violin partita. It was created at the piano, in interaction with the instrument. This is not a Romantic-style arrangement, but rather a joyfully ironical hallucination seen through Stravinsky-like neoclassical glasses, in which Bach’s music takes on completely new shades of colour.
Risto-Matti Marin 2026