Saturday, January 26, 2019

Rameau for violin and guitar

Continuing my series of posts on transcriptions for violin and guitar. This piece by Rameau does not have the ideal texture for transcription for violin and guitar, but it works quite well and it is so very beautiful I make no apologies! The guitar needs to be tuned in low D. It is not hard to play, you just have to know that it is in rondeau form which means that you play (and repeat if you wish) the first section up to the double bar, then you play the first reprise, then repeat the first section again. You then jump to the second reprise and finish by ending with the first section. This can be summarized as A(A)BACA.


There is an absolutely sublime performance by Grigory Sokolov on piano, an encore from a concert in Berlin a few years ago.


2 comments:

Steven Watson said...

My sight reading needs a lot of improvement (true of so many guitarists, it seems), so I am always happy to find more material to read through. With the exception of the Debussy, I found them fine to read. The Rameau was especially easy. They seemed to work well, very intuitively.

I do love the Rameau. I recall half-learning a version for solo guitar a few months ago. Had some awkward stretches but was quite beautiful.

Bryan Townsend said...

Oh yes, that Debussy prelude has some really, really gnarly chords!