Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Transcriptions for Piano by Saint-Saëns • Siloti • Reger • d'Albert • Kabalevsky

Piano transcriptions at one time had a place of the greatest importance in the dissemination of music, before the days of recordings and the growth of interest in period instruments and fidelity to the original composer's supposed intentions. Until relatively recently arrangements of orchestral music for piano duet or two pianos, or even for three players, was commonplace, particularly in an age when every household had its piano. Transcription, of course, predates the nineteenth-century popularity of the piano and Bach himself wrote keyboard transcriptions of a series of concertos by contemporary composers such as Vivaldi, Alessandro Marcello, Telemann and even the talented young Prince Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar. Arrangements of this kind offer a further insight into the works on which they are based