For ORCHESTRA: Bach Fantasia and Fugue in a-minor BWV 904

One of Bach's greatest and most powerful works is his organ fantasy in a-minor BWV 904. There is also a great version for piano. Here is my attempt to orchestrate it for a classical orchestra as I have done it with numerous other works by Bach, Beethoven, .... before. Of the majestic intro I took only the first 12 bars (respectivly the repeated last 12 bars).
I hope you will enjoy it and I recommend it to listen to it with headphones!
There is another beautiful orchestration of this work by Kurt Redel but he takes a different - softer - appraoch without trumpete and timpani
Recorded with notePerformer.com

[@ChipsAplentyBand]

Gerd, MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU if you celebrate the holiday.
As a fellow composer/arranger my own interests and style are similar to yours.I know this sort of work takes lots of time and I wonder how you got so interested in doing completions and orchestrations of older music yourself? Why do you think Schubert's 8th symphony ended up unfinished (or perhaps got partly misplaced)?
Like you, I also once orchestrated Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 1 upon the notion that orchestrating all 32-35 of them would yield us more Beethoven symphonies to enjoy. I used Finale for that orchestration and utilized the instrumentation of his Symphony No. 1 which was the closest in time to the his sonata. Just last year (2022j I completed my own first symphony (in a very traditional style) at age 67 so I'm a late bloomer when it comes to composing symphonies of my own.
I would probably have a UA-cam channel like yours except I don't know how to create svore videos. Thanks for sharing your work with us here!
Don C.
Mishawaka, IN

[@gerdprengel7616]

I would love to listen to your symphony ... 😊 why I think that Schuberts unfinished is unfinished? Because he sketched most of the Scherzo which I needed to orchestrate....

[@ChipsAplentyBand]

@@gerdprengel7616 Do you think Schubert's fully orchestrated opening bars of the 'Unfinished' Symphony's Scherzo being followed by incomplete/unorchestrated sketches might indicate him suddenly running short of time for some reason (illness onset, another project he wanted or needed to start immediately, some other kind of unpostponable life event intervening)? I often think about his situation in terms of my own composing habits to see if that suggests a possible explanation.
The only reason I can think of for him switching to extended unorchestrated sketches following the fully orchestrated opening bars is to quickly get as much of the Scherzo's remaining substance down on paper while the movement was still fresh in his thoughts (orchestration is easy to do separately later once the essential substance is safely gotten down in the heat of the moment first). But it sure seems like he didn't finish even the sketched remainder due to some unavoidable interruption of time and/or corcumstances. A remaining clue would be whether pages were obviously torn off the end of the autograph score.
I hope he didn't stop merely because for a while he had run out of that particular score paper and so turned to composing other new music on different paper with, say, fewer staves needed(!)
Normally I would think of a half-finished symphony artistically as 'no' symphony at all until all the movements are complete, but in those days even new symphonies were frequently enough performed piecemeal-i.e., a movement or two at a time-at 'sampler' concerts of a composer's work for promotional purposes. So I would guess that Schubert might have sent the first two (completed) movements to Hüttenbrenner as 'sufficient thanks' on that basis because two movements were already suitable for programming at a 'sampler concert' performance to proceed in case Hüuttenbrenner could have helped to arrange that. Another possibility is that if Schubert's syphillus symptoms broke out at this same time the first two movements might have also been sent to Anselm for 'safekeeping' if Schubert had been scared he might die soon.
You're very kind to ask about hearing my symphony. If you'll send an email to my email address (below) so that I have yours I can send you the recording as .mp3 email attachments. My address is:
[e-mail]