Arranging BWV 527 for piano (part I)

In my last post, I mentioned that I will be arranging the third movement from Bach’s Organ Trio Sonata III for solo piano. Here is a sneak peak of my progress so far:

Fig. 1. First 8 bars of my piano arrangement of BWV 527.

Fig. 1. First 14 bars of BWV 527, Johann Sebastian Bach.

There isn’t much to see yet, but there are some interesting issues I would like to address. The first thing you might notice is that the bass line has been transposed down an octave. At first, it seemed like an arbitrary decision, but upon repeated listenings, I realize the pedalboard notes sound an octave lower than written anyway, so it appears to be a reasonable choice.

Interestingly, at a few points later on in the piece, the upper two voices diverge such that they are unplayable using the right hand alone. Sometimes, I overcome this by transposing the left hand an octave up (or it finds its way to that register some how) and then it is able to play both the pedalboard notes and some of the middle voice. There are times when the playability of the arrangement “hangs on by a thread” but in general, I would say it is playable.