Telemann : Arr. Carsten Grondahl
Bergmann Edition : 10 pages
The suite is in three movements, Allemande, Courante and Gigue. It comes from a collection of keyboard pieces that J. S. Bach put together in 1720 “Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach." his eldest son. As a result it was listed in the Bach catalogue as BWV 824 even though the suite was originally written by Telemann.
The arrangement uses a 6th string to D , and the opening Allemande has a lovely resonant opening of a very Bachian arpeggio pattern that acts as a canon , being repeated two octaves below, and then continuing through various keys as it progresses along its way. I found the huge part of it very guitaristic, although there was one bar (No21) where I found it awkward to accommodate the second beat and where exactly to put my fingers. Nevertheless this was a fine opening.
The following Courante is again lots of fun, very guitaristic, mostly in two voices and an almost constant flow of quavers .There is an ossia for the last 4 bars, and personally as I have a long LH stretch, I found the alternative much better to play and more appropriate than the higher voiced version of the bass part in the other.
The final Gigue has a penchant for triad chords for much of the time, and they worked very well. There are a number of reverse mordents on some notes which work very well, except for the odd one , for example bar 9 , where again the fingering proved awkward there. However, that said the Gigue bounces along very happily, and is a fine closing movement to what is a slightly shorter baroque suite than one might expect.
I liked this suite very much, and had not come across it before. It has multiple reminiscences of the Bach sound, and as such any players who have a good technique (for they WILL need it) will find this Telemann suite very satisfying to play. They will have a couple of places to figure out exactly where to place which fingers where, but after that, it is well worth getting to know
Chris Dumigan
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