More Bach Blogging

I throw this out, well, because this is my blog and I feel like it.

If you like Bach and you'd like to try something slightly off the beaten path, may I recommend his Trio Sonata in C, BWV 1037? I'm listening to the gigue at the moment - it's one of the more "toe-tapping" pieces by old J.S. that I know of and it never ceases to pick me up when I listen to it. I've got a great recording on a mixed Bach/Vivaldi Hyperion disk featuring Jaap Schroder, Stanley Ritchie, Myron Lutzke and Albert Fuller.

I'm still on my Bach kick at home on the piano, the Muses not yet having abandonded me. At the moment, I'm playing around with the Goldberg Variations and, much to my encouragement, actually getting requests to play some of them from the Llama-ettes.

I can only sight-read a handful of the variations comfortably (I don't say accurately - that would be something else entirely), but it is enough for my enjoyment. These include:

The Aria
Variation No. 1 (one of my favorites)
Variation No. 4
Variation No. 7 - al Tempo di Giga
Variation No. 9 - Canone al Terza
Variation No. 10 - Fughetta
Variation No. 16 - Ouverture (and then only when I'm sufficiently buzzed to bluff my way through all the hemi-demi-semi-quaver stuff in the opening section)
Variation No. 18 - Canone alla Sesta (one of my very favorites)
Variation No. 19
Variation No. 30 - Quodlibet

You can browse the full set in midi files here.

Cul-chah, man. Cul-chah.