One might have thought Bach wrote sufficient orchestral music – concertos, suites – to keep everyone supplied with enough repertoire. But that didn’t stop violinist, conductor and inveterate arranger Dmitry Sitkovetsky from making a string-orchestra version of one of Bach’s supreme masterpieces. And we don’t need to hear the Goldberg Variations on anything other than a keyboard, but that didn’t deter the Britten Sinfonia from including Sitkovetsky’s version (which he first made for string trio in 1985 and then expanded for string orchestra) as the main work in their latest programme.
It’s an expert piece of transcription, and the Britten Sinfonia played it extremely well, as you might expect. But the guts had gone from the Goldberg: the whole tension of a performance on piano or harpsichord – the virtuoso demands, the crossing contrapuntal lines, the inner voices, and the sense of wholeness that a single player as opposed to a collective can bring to it. Sitkovetsky modelled his arrangement – its choice of tempi, phrasing, ornamentation – on Glenn Gould’s famousrecording, but evoking that only underlines what’s sacrificed.
A couple of premieres conducted by Carlos del Cueto preceded the Bach. Tom Coult’s My Lines Are Not Mad was commissioned by the Britten Sinfonia: taking its title from a quote by Matisse, it’s a gritty, well-behaved essay for strings, built on a foundation of sustained pitches that are interrupted by sforzando attacks and flurries of activity. Hans Abrahamsen’s 2011 Double Concerto, for violin, piano and strings, being heard for the first time in London (Thomas Gould and Alasdair Beatson were the soloists), is equally parsimonious with its material, sometimes reducing it to a single line or simple gestures. But in its quietly beautiful, introspective way it touches on a whole range of musical worlds, from late Brahms to Arvo Pärt.
