Passacaglia in C minor BWV 582 (?1708–12)

arranged for piano by Fazil Say

Transcribing Bach’s organ Passacaglia in C minor for piano is an enormous challenge. It has been done before, most notably perhaps by Eugen d’Albert, although the more realistic arrangements have been for two pianos, like Max Reger’s, or orchestra, like Stokowski’s. The problem, of course, is to accommodate the pedal part at the same time as the manual parts, which are quite complicated enough in themselves. The pedals introduce the eight-bar theme (borrowed from an organ mass by Bach’s French contemporary André Raison) and carry it through the first 10 and the last five of the 20 cycles. The manuals take over responsibility for the passacaglia theme in the 11th to the 15th. But even here, until the texture thins out into arpeggios, they continue to elaborate contrapuntal variations “intertwined so ingeniously,” as Schumann put it, “that one can never cease to be amazed.” Just how Fazil Say’s arrangement solves the textural problems remains to be seen but the overall shape of the work – which reaches a climax in the 12th variation, winds down in the next three and then restores the pressure in the last five – should remain unaffected. Originally designed to be followed directly by a fugue on the same theme, incidentally, the Passacaglia requires a different ending when performed on its own.