Review: Bach's Keyboard Partitas Orchestrated (Rather Well)

Bach (arr. Oehler): Keyboard Partitas BWV 825, 826, 829, 830 (Corrente only) and Oehler: Brook of Light. Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble and The Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory (Toronto), Trevor Pinnock (cond.) LINN

[@fredericmorris2931]

Thanks Dave for the pointer. Looking forward to listening. So great that Pinnock is going strong at 76.

[@MorganHayes_Composer.Pianist]

thanks for highlighting this release. The gigue from the 5th Partita is a particular hit from what i've sampled so far.

[@user-et8mh2ki1c]

Thank you, Dave. As someone who dislikes orchestral arrangements of Bach's organ music, you make Pinnock's arrangements sound quite alluring, precisely because of the smallness of the scale. What I dislike about the full orchestra arrangements is that they turn whole-cloth pieces into a series of ragged, unrelated strips of cloth. (The one exception is Schoenberg's arrangement of the St Anne fugue). I can't imagine any composer writing symphonic music treating the various sections of the orchestra as randomly and haphazardly as Stokowski does in his arrangement of the the D Minor. But it sounds from your review of the Pinnock that the arrangements retain a greater sense of wholeness.

[@AlexMadorsky]

A bit surprised they used an English horn instead of a horn horn. I look forward to streaming this nonetheless.