The notes for this album of popular Bach works transcribed for mandolin and guitar are both defensive and uninformative; two parallel essays, one by the performers and one by a different annotator, essentially argue that it's OK to transcribe Bach's music in this way. This is no surprise, especially inasmuch as some of the music presented had optional instrumentation in its original form. One would like to learn more about the transcriptions themselves, and their aims -- does the indication that some pieces had "revisions" by the two performers mean that they did the transcriptions themselves? In any event, Bach's music is nicely adapted for the mandolin-guitar player, with effective use of the mandolin's repeated notes in slow music to replace the vibrato lyricism of a violin. Mandolinist
Dorina Frati and guitarist Piera Dadomo have a way of pushing the tempo within phrases that might be irritating in a conventional performance but works in the lighter, night-music setting evoked by these forces. What
Frati and Dadomo call the "little preludes," from Bach's instructional Clavierbüchlein, are inspired choices that allow
Frati to add her distinctive lyricism to Bach's music in a simple, restricted context. The only work that doesn't fare so well is the big Chaconne from the Partita No. 2 for unaccompanied violin in D minor, BWV 1004, which seems to lose its reason for being when adapted for guitar (played here as a solo). For the most part, though, these are lovely Bach renderings for the mandolin lover or for any outdoor gathering.