I’ve been listening to Dmitri Sitkovetsky’s 20-year-old string-orchestra arrangement of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations — recorded in 1993 and still available from Nonesuch.
My main reason for recommending it: the music dances so beautifully.
Not sure I should be posting the YouTube version here, because it’s a whole performance, so make sure you check out the album details on the official site here.
John Terauds
This CD is an amazing achievement: utterly convincing. It’s been one of my favourites since I picked it up in the early 90′s. I can’t recommend it highly enough. My family and I recently went to a Santa Cruz Chamber Players concert (http://scchamberplayers.org/concert-1.html) where the Sitkovetsky transcription was performed by a string trio. It was nice but I felt that more instruments on each part would have covered up some of the difficult transitions when a melody was handed from one instrument to another.
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