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Born: November 16, 1844 - Naumburg, Burgenlandkreis, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
Died: July 28, 1902 - Freiburg im Breisgau, Freiburg Government Region, Baden-Württemberg, Germany |
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The German pianist and arranger, Gustav Clemens Felix Krug, was born into a musical family. J.S. Bach’s music was cultivated on the grandest scale in the Krug household. His father, Gustav Adolf Krug (1805-1874), was a German civil servant, pianist and composer; and his godfather - Felix Mendelssohn, no less - inspired him with a Romantic approach to this repertory. It was by no means easy for him transfer these works as the 6 Brandenburg Concertos BWV 1046-1051 to two pianos, but his musical background meant that he was more or less predestined to rise to this challenge. As a result Krug remained faithful to J.S. Bach in the his arranements, successfully resisting the temptation to redistribute the alto and tenor sounds of the original and draw on the vast compass of the two pianos. Instead the tone colour is focussed entirely on the instruments’ middle register, while avoiding creating more agglomerations of sound. As far as possible, he has redistributed the alternation between the original’s soloists and allotted it to the two pianos in a manner that allows them to weave J.S. Bach’s elaborate carpet of sound in an altogether virtuosic way. |
