Suite for Lower Strings, based on themes of Bach

"In her typically imaginative style, Assad has taken a dozen or so of Bach’s greatest hit tunes, from the opening of the Toccata in D Minor to “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” and whirled them through a music processor. Some melodies are truncated and cut up, while others are spiced with dissonance in the manner of Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite, and some are placed in playful counterpoint against each other. Much passing around of parts among the individual players allows me to point to violist Elisabeth Prior and cellist Robin Bonnell in the back rows as outstandingly strong, lyrical performers. The violins got an occasional descant accompaniment, notably a pizzicato rendering from the Well-Tempered Clavier. At one point, the cellos are running a theme from one of the unaccompanied cello suites, the violas play the “Air on the G String” over it as a counterpoint line, and the violins chip in with a fragment from a Brandenburg Concerto. Listeners who love their Bach but refuse to take him too seriously would enjoy this." 

San Francisco Classical Voice

Suite For Lower Strings Mov. 1

"In her typically imaginative style, Assad has taken a dozen or so of Bach’s greatest hit tunes, from the opening of the Toccata in D Minor to “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” and whirled them through a music processor. Some melodies are truncated and cut up, while others are spiced with dissonance in the manner of Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite, and some are placed in playful counterpoint against each other. Much passing around of parts among the individual players allows me to point to violist Elisabeth Prior and cellist Robin Bonnell in the back rows as outstandingly strong, lyrical performers. The violins got an occasional descant accompaniment, notably a pizzicato rendering from the Well-Tempered Clavier. At one point, the cellos are running a theme from one of the unaccompanied cello suites, the violas play the “Air on the G String” over it as a counterpoint line, and the violins chip in with a fragment from a Brandenburg Concerto. Listeners who love their Bach but refuse to take him too seriously would enjoy this."

SF Classical Voice

Suite For Lower Strings Mov. 2

Suite For Lower Strings Mov. 4

"It was thus amusing to note that Assad used her suite also to turn the tables on Bach, devising a mash-up of all the tracks from some imagined My Favorite Bach recording refracted through a series of movements, each of which takes a different approach to instrumentation. The resulting effect was probably closer in spirit to PDQ than to Johann Sebastian, but all the gags emerged through some highly imaginative writing for individual instruments that are too often dismissed as accompaniment support."

Examiner.com

Suite for Lower Strings, based on themes of Bach

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