It has been said that imitation is the highest form of flattery.
Throughout the centuries artists, writers and composers have occasionally
taken their admiration for a great work of art a step further, feeling
the need to get inside a work, and to filter it through their own
creative process. In so doing they create something new, giving
us a new parallax from which to appreciate both the inspiration
and its offspring. Thus we have the eighteenth-century revival of
classical Greek and Roman architecture, Goya's studies of Rubens,
and Schoenberg's transcriptions of Brahms or Johann Strauss Jr.
In music, the act of transcription and arrangement has been practiced
for centuries. From the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries, the
most common form of re-creation was the transcription of vocal polyphony
for instruments.
It comes as no surprise then that one of Bach's most famous and
brilliant compositions, the Goldberg Variations, should attract
the attention of nonkeyboard musicians wishing to add this work
to their own repertoire. Arranging the Goldberg Variations is no
easy task. We have in this piece a summation of all the compositional
styles, forms and techniques of German harpsichord music in Bach's
era, presented in a single work of astounding ingenuity, brilliance
and virtuosity. Yet despite its keyboard origin and figuration,
the Goldberg Variations, like so many other works by Bach, can successfully
survive translation to another medium. It is surely a sign of the
great universality of Bach's music that it can make a powerful impact
regardless of the means through which it is presented.
Dimitri Sitkovetsky's two brilliant transcriptions for string trio
and string orchestra respectively have already proved this aspect
of the Goldberg Variations. Arthur Frackenpohl, the noted American
composer and arranger laureate for the Canadian Brass, has undertaken
the arguably greater challenge of transcribing the Goldbergs for
brass quintet. Completely fluent in the technical and musical possibilities
of brass instruments in general, and of the Canadian Brass in particular,
Frackenpohl has created a tour de force for the ensemble. His sensitivity
in translating Bach's keyboard figurations and extracting the colors
and moods inherent in each variation has been matched equally by
the Canadian Brass's fluent artistry, virtuosity and obvious affinity
for this work.
My participation in this project as musical advisor was a welcome
invitation and an exciting challenge. Throughout the rehearsals
and recording sessions, it was a revelation to hear the work unfold,
variation by variation, and to metamorphose and blossom into its
new incarnation. I will always recall that last, long, hot summer's
day of recording in an unairconditioned church and the sound of
the concluding aria, played so reverently by Jens, Ronnie, Chris,
Gene and Chuck, bringing everything to its sweet, inevitable close.
(Ivars Taurins has been a member of Tafelmusik,
Canada's baroque period instrument orchestra, for twenty years,
both as principal violist and as director of the Tafelmusik Chamber
Choir. He is a frequent guest conductor with orchestras and choirs
across Canada, lectures on aspects of period performance practice,
and teaches conducting at the University of Toronto.)
