Air (“Air on the G-string”) from Suite No.3 in D major

Bach didn’t write an “Air on the G-string.” He did write an “Air” in his orchestral Suite No.3 in D major but it wasn’t until the German violinist August Wilhlemj got hold of it in 1871 and arranged it for violin and piano in C major, dropping the melodic line more than an octave below its original pitch, that anyone thought of playing it on the G-string. Of course, the lowest string of the violin has a special quality of its own and it is not difficult to understand why, at a time when no one much cared about what the composer himself had in mind, a violinist would want to apply the full romantic treatment to Bach’s melody. It sounds incomparably better, however, in its D major on the upper strings of the first violins and woven in luminous counterpoint with the rest of the ensemble.