J.S. Bach Arr Janet Agostino
Les Productions D’Oz: Score and separate parts: (14, 5, 4, 4 and 4 pages respectively)
The piece arranged here for four guitars has a more complex history than you might at first believe, because it was firstly it was the Prelude from the 3rd Violin Partita (BWV1006), written in 1720.Then it was used as an instrumental introduction to Bach’s Cantata BWV29, written in 1731, which is what we have here, and of course subsequently used as the Prelude to the 4th Lute Suite (approx. 1735 – 40), which is the final version.
In the Sinfonia, the original scoring was for Organ (which was arranged from the violin solo part), and 3 trumpets, timpani, two oboes, strings and continuo. In this version you find here, the music has been carefully distributed so that each player has a go at the original solo and the accompaniment, so that everyone gets a fair share of the various parts of the piece. This means of course that the almost constant run of semi – quavers is evenly spread over all three players and the flow must be constant and sound effortless, which of course it most certainly is not!
The accompaniment music (the music that is not part of the original solo) is very interesting and always sounding entirely apt when accompanying the solo melody and it fair to say that this is a really good quartet arrangement that does add some depth to the original work, and as such will be loved by audiences and players alike, and therefore I can only say that this is a lovely arrangement that deserves to do well!
Chris Dumigan