Raaf Hekkema
Partitas for Saxophone
- Type SACD
- Label Challenge Classics
- UPC 0608917264821
- Catalog number CC 72648
- Release date 24 October 2014
About the album
Raaf Hekkema: In 2012 I recorded, purely for personal use, all the Bach solo arrangements I had made up until then, including the first four movements of the second partita. After listening to them I realized that my self-imposed decree to keep my hands off the chaconne from that partita, suddenly no longer seemed etched in stone. So I took a stab at producing a convincing version of it. Following my Paganini formula, I first made an ‘analytical’ version: one that would do justice to the construction of the music, disregarding all thoughts of what might be fun to play. An important step, because otherwise you end up taking the instrumental route too soon. Bach’s music is implicitly polyphonic: a melody usually contains more than one voice, played in turn and together forming the melodic curve as a whole. The register and relationship between the voices largely determine the buildup of tension in the music. This applies to nearly all of Bach’s music, but in the violin works he often uses multiple strings simultaneously to explicitly underscore the polyphony. So first I had to find a credible solution for the issue of polyphony. After that the other me would get his chance: the saxophone player who had free rein to determine what sounded good and, perhaps more importantly, where the advantages of the saxophone over the violin (arpeggios, for instance, are easier to play on the saxophone) could be put to good use. In this inner collaboration, the analyst constantly had the upper hand, for we were talking about a meticulously constructed work by the greatest musical architect ever. The resulting version satisfied both my identities: the analyst and the instrumentalist. With a sense of liberation I set to work on the remaining movements of the partitas, which went with hardly a hitch.
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11Partita II , BWV 1004 Allemanda
04:24 -
12Partita II , BWV 1004 Corrente
02:30 -
13Partita II , BWV 1004 Sarabanda
03:38 -
14Partita II , BWV 1004 Giga
04:17 -
15Partita II , BWV 1004 Ciaccona
13:23 -
16Partita III , BWV 1006 Preludio
03:44 -
17Partita III , BWV 1006 Loure
03:57 -
18Partita III , BWV 1006 Gavotte en rondeau
02:41 -
19Partita III , BWV 1006 Menuet I – Menuet II
04:08 -
110Partita III , BWV 1006 Bourrée
01:28 -
111Partita III , BWV 1006 Gigue
01:43 -
112Partita I, BWV 1002 Allemanda
05:39 -
113Partita I, BWV 1002 Double
03:04 -
114Partita I, BWV 1002 Corrente
03:36 -
115Partita I, BWV 1002 Double-Presto
03:48 -
116Partita I, BWV 1002 Sarabande
03:23 -
117Partita I, BWV 1002 Double
02:54 -
118Partita I, BWV 1002 Tempo di Borea
03:04 -
119Partita I, BWV 1002 Double
03:40