Charlton: Bach on Fire

Long a staple for violinists, Johann Sebastian Bach's Partitas and Sonatas for Unaccompanied Violin are such excellent works of art that they have been arranged for everything from guitar to full symphony orchestra and practically everything inbetween. Frederick Charlton began working on the Partitas when he was a teenager. Over the next thiry years he has arranged and performed all of the movements from the three partitas to critical acclaim. While the "Partitas and Sonatas" can be very beautiful when performed on the violin, many consider them to be simply too high in register preferring to hear them down an octave on guitar or lute. Bach himself arranged the three fugues from the unaccompanied "Sonatas" for Church pipe organ, writing them in a lower key and doing some of the fugal entrances a full two octaves lower than the original violin version. The versions that Frederick Charlton has arranged for contrabass are an octave and a fifth to an octave and a sixth lower than the original.

1-2. Sarabande and Double (from Partita No.1)
3. Giga (from Partita No.3)
4. Sarabanda (from Partita No.2)
5. Gavotte en Rondeau (from Partita No.3)
6-7. Allemanda and Double (from Partita No.1)
8. Menuet I and II (from Partita No.3)
9. Ciaccona (from Partita No.2)
10. Loure (from Partita No.3)