Bach modestly described his fourth publication of Keyboard Practice pieces as an Aria with Diverse Variations for the Harpsichord Composed for Music Lovers to Refresh their Spirits. 277 years later, the piece easily holds its place as the greatest ever work of its kind. The story that it was written for the young J G Goldberg, one of Bach's occasional students, to play at night when his boss, the sickly Count Keyserlingk, could not sleep, is probably not true. But it remains a lovely story. The music is satisfying on so many levels that it could probably help anyone to do anything, not limited to sleeping.
I have heard it many times on harpsichord or piano, even played it myself, though not so far in public. Also on accordion, saxophones, flutes, electronics, and various sizes of orchestra. Purists will always argue that Bach's original is the best, but as is so often true with Bach's music, it works really well in all media.
Since Laura performed it at Juilliard under Monica Huggett in Dimitri Sitkovetsky's very fine string orchestra version, she has been hounding me to program the orchestra version in an Albany Consort concert. Several years ago, I missed a chance to play it with San Francisco Symphony due to conflicting concerts. So happily here we are fulfilling our dreams and bringing it to you this spring.
While the Sitkovetsky score is very fine, I am an incurable experimenter, and immediately wanted to change a few things. That train of thought led me to create my own version. No radical departures from Bach - I am very faithful to his notes, also striving to keep them in the same octave as Bach's original in deference to the work's greatness and integrity. But I expanded the piece visually from being an impressive feat for two hands to a wonderful cascade of five part string color, from the highest to the lowest.
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