Guitarist Xosé Antonio Rodríguez playing Bach alongside the tomb of one of the Santiago de Compostela monks (screen shot from YouTube video courtesy of the Omni Foundation)
Following up on last month’s account of guitarist Gerhard Reichenbach playing his own arrangements of music from the Clavier-Übung partitas composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, guitarist Xosé Antonio Rodríguez has released his own guitar performance of the opening Prelude movement from the BWV 1006 partita in E major for solo violin. This is the latest addition of an OMNI on-Location video curated by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts. Given how much of Bach’s time was spent in the service of the church, I found it more than a little interesting that this video captured a performance that took place inside the ancient Spanish monastery in Santiago de Compostela. Personally, it seemed a bit ironic that this unabashedly upbeat music should find its way to this particular monastery! A filmed setting of such a performance would not have been out of place in Luis Buñuel’s film The Milky Way!
Where the music itself is concerned, Rodríguez gave a thoroughly engaging account of one of Bach’s most familiar compositions. In the music’s original version, Bach guided the solo violinist along a path of energetic gestures, each one picking up right after its predecessor has concluded. Rodriguez’ disposition was focused on every gesture from beginning to end, yet one could still appreciate the liveliness of the overall rhetoric. Hopefully, further video accounts of his approach to Bach will be forthcoming!
No comments:
Post a Comment