Music : Guitar Virtuosos play Bach

Rating: - A good partnership of happy music

This is a good collection of music by Johann Sebastian Bach. Half of the album consists of his cello suites, being transcribed by Segovia for guitarist John Williams (not to be confused with John Williams the American composer of film music), and the remainder is an assortment of transcriptions, again by Segovia, from other instruments including the violin partitas (spelt incorrectly as `paritia' on the track list) and lute suites.

All the works are lively and happy pieces - the terms such as allemande, courante, sarabande, minuetto, gigue, bouree, gavotte and chaconne have Italian and French origins and are used to describe the rhythm of dance orientated music themes.

Spanish guitarist Andres Segovia, born 1893, is claimed as being largely self-taught, and credited with tutoring the young John Williams (Australian, born 1941), although some of the comments made about each other suggest they didn't enjoy a particularly close friendship. Segovia once said of Williams that `God had touched his brow', while Williams commented of Segovia (admittedly many years later) that he was `a very limited teacher and a limited musician' (BBC Music magazine, May 1999).

This album is similar to the other titles on the Acrobat label in that there is little in the way of sleeve notes, the information limited to a very brief biography of the guitarists and sadly no indication of the recording dates of these works. I can only guess that the Williams tracks were from before his 1970's rock band venture with `Sky' and the Segovia ones from sometime during his most prolific recording period between the 1940's and 70's.

This is a good value collection of music, and while the recordings might not be particularly recent, they certainly show off the skills of both guitarists. A little more sleeve note information would broaden the appeal of the album, and certainly make it more credible as a worthwhile representation of Bach's transcriptions for guitar.