Arpeggione. Some music can only be performed on the instrument it was written for: think of Beethoven’s piano sonatas or Chopin’s etudes. Bach, on the other hand, loved to take a good piece and use it in very different arrangements. For example, music historians think that his famous Harpsichord Concerto I in d minor, BWV 1052 was based on a lost violin concerto. That concerto, in turn, was arranged by Bach as an organ concerto. And of course nowadays, we usually hear it performed on a modern concert piano – and, when played by someone like Glenn Gould, to an amazing effect.
Franz Schubert wrote a sonata for an arpeggione, a string instrument invented in Vienna around the 1820s. Arpeggiones went out of vogue very soon thereafter, so the sonata got arranged for a number of instruments. It is usually performed on a viola, but we have three different transcriptions: Noah Turner Rogoff plays it on a Cello, Nicholas Santangelo Schwartz – on the Double Bass (!), and Kristin Figard on the Viola. Enjoy!
July 26, 2010
Arpeggione. Some music can only be performed on the instrument it was written for: think of Beethoven’s piano sonatas or Chopin’s etudes. Bach, on the other hand, loved to take a good piece and use it in very different arrangements. For example, music historians think that his famous Harpsichord Concerto I in d minor, BWV 1052 was based on a lost violin concerto. That concerto, in turn, was arranged by Bach as an organ concerto. And of course nowadays, we usually hear it performed on a modern concert piano – and, when played by someone like Glenn Gould, to an amazing effect.
Franz Schubert wrote a sonata for an arpeggione, a string instrument invented in Vienna around the 1820s. Arpeggiones went out of vogue very soon thereafter, so the sonata got arranged for a number of instruments. It is usually performed on a viola, but we have three different transcriptions: Noah Turner Rogoff plays it on a Cello, Nicholas Santangelo Schwartz – on the Double Bass (!), and Kristin Figard on the Viola. Enjoy!