J.S. Bach: Three Or One - Transcriptions by Fred Thomas

Much of Bach’s work is built up from musical lines, and one way into his world is to listen to how those different lines (or “voices”) interact to form a beautiful whole. Bach wrote many of his most important pieces for the pipe organ, but those voices can often get lost within the instrument’s textures. That’s why this recording feels like such a revelation. There are no heavy-handed transcriptions here. Instead, there’s an illuminating translucency and a hushed playfulness to these arrangements—for violin, cello and piano, and piano solo (hence this album’s name, Three or One)—of chorale preludes from Orgelbüchlein, Bach’s incomplete set of chorale preludes on Lutheran hymns. The arias from various cantatas are just as stunningly rendered and are all beautifully recorded and engineered.