Wednesday Bach Blogging: Canadian Brass and Four Fugues


The Canadian Brass, at the 2012 Festival de Sion, in Sion, Switzerland, performing Johann Sebastian Bach's "Little" Fugue in G minor, BWV 578.

From some time in the 1980s, an earlier lineup of the Canadian Brass having some fun swinging a few bars of the Fugue #2 from Bach's Well Tempered Clavier Book 1:


One of J.S. Bach's most well known pieces, the Toccatta and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, gets the Canadian Brass treatment in a 2009 concert video:


And if you have an hour or so, here's the original version of the Canadian Brass in an audio-only recording, of their transcription of one of J.S. Bach's last works, The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080:


My apologies - since finding and posting the above video, it appears that a few commercial ads have been stuck into the middle of this performance.  Kind of jarring and takes away from the beauty of the music, but it's a reminder that as ever, nothing is truly free of charge.

A final note - for everyone with so limited a musical vision that they cannot imagine the music of Johann Sebastian Bach being played in any fashion except for what they might consider to be "as Bach intended it to be", or something equally narrow minded, the Canadian Brass, among many others, show us that the ways in which Bach's work can be interpreted are limitless.