Opus Klassiek has praised Alon Sariel’s Plucked Bach III, with critic Aart van der Wal writing that Sariel’s handling of Bach’s polyphony reveals a musician who is superior in every respect.
Van der Wal frames the album as the culmination of Sariel’s multi-year Plucked Bach project, calling him one of the most fascinating interpreters and arrangers of the Bach repertoire working with Pentatone today. The review highlights Sariel’s use of historical plucked instruments, including mandolin, mandola, archlute, theorbe, oud, baroque guitar, and the Turkish bağlama, noting that rather than imitating the cello, violin, or organ, Sariel draws on each instrument’s unique idiomatic qualities to cast familiar Bach works in new light.
Van der Wal also praises Sariel’s rhetorical solutions to the challenge of sustaining counterpoint on decaying-resonance instruments, and highlights his own compositions, including a Mandolin Partita, as evidence that Sariel has positioned himself as a creative heir to the Baroque arrangement tradition.
Plucked Bach III is out now on PENTATONE.
