Gerhard Reichenbach Plays BWV 825 on Guitar

Gerhard Reichenbach playing Bach in the Chapel of the Baroque Castle Saalfeld in the city of Thüringen (from the OMNI on-Location video of his performance)

This morning saw the release of the latest OMNI on-Location video produced by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts. This was a solo guitar performance by Gerhard Reichenbach, filmed in the Chapel of the Baroque Castle Saalfeld in the city of Thüringen in Germany. Reichenbach played his own transcription of keyboard music by Johann Sebastian Bach.

The selection was BWV 825, the first of the six partitas that were included in the composer’s first Clavier-Übung (keyboard practice) collection. As is the case for all of the partitas, there is an introductory movement (in this case “Praeludium”), followed by a series of dance movements. With the exceptions of the “Praeludium,” the “Sarabande,” and the second “Menuet,” all the movements consisted of two-voice counterpoint. It would be fair to say that, taken as a whole, Bach conceived of the composition as a study in both harmonic progression and counterpoint.

Reichenbach’s interpretations of these two genres could not have been more faithful to Bach’s intentions. One of the things I have learned from listening to guitar music is the way in which each of the six strings has its own unique sonority. Reichenbach could thus exploit that diversity of those sonorities to provide a clear account of each of the polyphonic voices, while also finding just the right sonorities for the “journey” of a harmonic progression. In other words, Reichenbach could deploy his guitar in such a way as to highlight the structural details of each of the partita’s movements through techniques that would have eluded a keyboard performance!

I have been listening to guitar performances of Bach going all the way back to my first encounter with Andrés Segovia’s All-Bach Program album. It would be fair to say that many of the tracks on that album prepared me for Reichenbach’s transcription of the BWV 825 partita. I also hope that Omni will, sooner or later, provide further examples of how Reichenbach has realized further transcriptions that are just as faithful  to Bach’s original keyboard sources.