Badinerie, BWV 1067

"Not familiar with this piece? Yes you are. Especially so, if you've heard Jonty Bankes from the Ukes whistle this piece with a speed and intonation that leaves me gasping. So, can four guitars achieve the speed of Jonty's puckerings? The good news is that three of the four parts are almost entirely in quavers. The bad news is that Guitar One is working twice as fast and almost without respite, and it's here that the audience will judge the entire performance. The guitar, of course, especially in non-professional hands, lacks some of the raw speed of the monophonic orchestral instruments. Even when playing one note at once. To compete with our fretless brethren, the players of the soft underbelly need to produce four notes a second, but poor old Guitar One is going for 8-notes-a-second and three short bursts of 16-notes-a-second (and too many in the burst to slur, before you ask, though there are suggested simplifications that remove the three flies from the ointment). I think that the lush guitar sound will allow us to drop the speed a little, so perhaps it's accessible to an acceptable number of mixed ability ensembles. Set in A minor, a tone down, it fits the guitar very well, and one feels Carulli could have penned the first phrase, as it seems so 'under the fingers'. But then Guitar One leaves the harbour and ventures out into more choppy waters. I like it - I think that a guitar quartet is going to sound very at home with this piece, though I worry about the speed. The orchestration gives all the forces something really melodic to play (well, what do you except from Bach?) and it's worth mentioning that Guitar Four would fit very well on a contra or octave bass, giving extra depth to the sound for no effort, and even better if teamed with a standard guitar on the same line. With all the part scores fitting on a single face of A4 paper, this is a very attractive little arrangement and one that an audience will enjoy straight away."

Derek: Hasted (Classical Guitar Magazine)