Rating: 3/5
Review:
Virtuosic playing, but the interpretations aren't always for me
This is excellent in many ways, but I'm not quite as bowled
over by it as some reviewers.
The first thing to say is that Paul Galbraith is an
excellent musician whose mastery of the eight-string guitar is remarkable. He has the quality of technique to make even
the most demanding passages here sound natural and straightforward, and the
sound of his instrument is simply lovely throughout.
The transcriptions, by Galbraith himself, are also very
good. The nature of the violin means
that the harmonies in Bach's original pieces are often (brilliantly) implied
rather than explicitly stated and Galbraith does a fine job of filling in the
harmonic structure to suit an instrument which can sound many notes at once,
without overlaying the music with superfluous additions.
My reservations are purely personal and lie in the
interpretations, which, although they have a lovely overall sound, seem to me
to lack some of Bach's essential pulse and drive in places and certainly aren't
varied enough in approach for me. The
mighty chaconne from the D minor Partita, for example, needs some bite and even
emotional bleakness in places, but the continuous flow of soft-toned notes and
gentle phrasing to me robs it of a good deal of its power.
Many people have found this set a real delight and you may
well agree, so do read other reviews as well, but for me, however excellent the
playing, this doesn't quite hit the spot and I can only give it a qualified
recommendation.
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