🔴 Beloved Bach | wk 20 - Sinfonia from Cantata no 29 BWV 29

Sinfonia from Cantata no. 29 BWV 29 arr for organ solo by Andrew Fletcher

9th April 2023 – Easter Sunday

Sample Set - Salisbury Cathedral, UK, ‘Father’ Henry Willis, 1876 (Milan Digital Audio)

Played on my ‘Trent Series’ console, made by Paul Stringfellow of Nottingham Midi Organs (www.nottinghammidiorgans.co.uk)

Bach made ingenious use of compositions he had written earlier, often blending them with new additions to always form an end result of perfect unity. BWV 29 is a sacred cantata composed in Leipzig in 1731 for 'Ratswechsel', the annual inauguration of a new town council, and it was first performed on 27 August of that year. 'Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir' ('We thank you, God, we thank you') is one of just a few Bach cantatas that opens with an orchestral sinfonia. The music began life as an arrangement of the prelude from a Partita for violin, BWV 1006, which Bach had already revised for organ and strings in 1729 for the wedding cantata, 'Herr Gott, Beherrscher aller Dinge'. Following in a similar vein, arrangements of this sinfonia for organ solo have been created by renowned composers such as Alexander Guilmant and Marcel Dupré - and this particular version by Andrew Fletcher.

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“Beloved Bach” was commissioned from me in 2022 as a Golden Wedding Anniversary present from a man to his wife: I was asked to record one piece of Bach organ music for her every week for a year – and that each recording should be ‘delivered’ every Sunday. The lady who is the beneficiary of this quite extraordinary gift is a very knowledgeable devotee of the great Baroque Master and always referred to her favorite composer as her true 'Beloved'.

I know that every organist is a Bach expert (or at least commonly has firm opinions on how the music should be played and interpreted) however, these recordings are not offered in any way to proclaim myself as some kind of Bach specialist – rather just as someone who shares with the recipient of this extraordinary gift a love of this astonishing music. As these videos are being released throughout the year, one on each Sunday of the liturgical calendar, some pieces are particular or relevant to that specific release day while others are not chosen with this in mind. Many of the pieces that are in this collection were chosen with a certain amount of knowledge of the person to whom this gift is dedicated, in as much as many of her favorites (some of which are lesser-known pieces) are included. All the recordings are ‘live’ in as much as my limited knowledge of videography hasn’t expanded yet to ‘splicing’, however where there are two movement pieces, generally there were two separate takes. I hope you enjoy these recordings – please subscribe to be notified when each new recording is released.




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