Peter Blanchette on archguitar, funky Bach.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieQej-99I6A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oALcIycL0M8&feature=related
There are plenty of videos of gutiar music in Youtube. If there are no critics, there is no progress have been said. However I make critics only if I have something positive to say. Otherwise it's actually nonsense, way to nowhere.
About style of PB
I'ld say that if I'll hear PB playing from elevator's loudspeakers, I'll recognize Him for sure. Isnt' this feature main in modern entertaining world? It's funky, It has convincing rhytm in It. There are pretty surprising accents, which remind some modern funky groove.
I can''t agree with this approach 100%. Those surprise-accents are destroying overall shape. When I listened PB first time I wondered, how in the earth can one person play such unformed, chaotically rhythmic sequence of notes by heart (later I noticed the sheet music delicately in front of him).
There is no attempt to serve the musical form to listener. When listening him repeatedly I started to see other things. For example - there is no evidence of repeating. I do not understand, that He plays music where repeating is introduced. PB manages to play repetitions as one big section . Music is therefore asomnolently long but rhytmically revealing.
Use of dynamics, those surprising chaotic quiet parts (obviously PB has realized, that He can't just play whole piece oudly, He must make use pianissimo somewhere) are making music even more hazy.
I listened once more for describing the effect of haziness. It may come also from the habit to omit the big pauses between sections, hiding the big endings with rushing immediately forfard. This makes following extremely hard.
Conclusion
Positive thing in PBs approach to Bach is use of powerful accents, clear rhythmical structure, which is rather crucial for baroque music. Negative side is omitting form as such, hiding music behind obscure dynamics and surprising accents. Those accents are revealing, but do not help listener in understanding what is going on.
