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The Sarabande from J. S. Bach's Cello Suite No. 5 is the most frequently asked solo on bass trombone auditions. To fail to play this piece at an audition is to end it before it starts as it is often asked first.
Begin with noting that if you have a cello edition of the Suites, the Fifth Suite is notated for a cello that is tuned differently than normal. Therefore, if you play the part as written, you will end up playing a handful of wrong notes. Be sure you have an edition that has this Suite in a transposed version or use the music above. It would surprise you how many times I have heard players at auditions play wrong notes because they were unaware of this simple fact.
We do not have a copy of the Suites in Bach's hand, however four copies exist from around the time Bach wrote them including one by his wife, Anna Magdalena Bach (from around 1730), one by Johann Petter Kellner (from 1726) and two in unknown hands from the late 18th century. (A facsimile edition of these four versions is available from Bärenreiter Kassel (1991); Johann Sebastian Bach, Neu Ausgabe Sämtlicher Werke, Serie VI, Band 2: Sech Suiten für Violoncello solo BWV 1007-1012 ; Die vier Quellen in verkleinerter Weidergabe Faksimile-beiband zum kritischen bericht von Hans Eppstein.) What is interesting is the fact that none of these four extant copies have the same phrasing and articulations. It is my view that audition committees don't want to hear bass trombonists play this piece just as a cellist would, but that they want to hear expressive, controlled playing that makes musical sense. As all modern editions of the piece have different phrasing (and even the so called "Urtext" editions differ), I came to the conclusion notated above after many years of study and practice.
To me, the germ of the piece is the five note phrase. The main phrases are marked with slurs, subphrases with dotted slurs. There is no tempo marked for the Sarabande; I usually play it slowly but not TOO slowly, somewhere around quarter note = 54-60. Some players like to play it at 40 but to listen to it at that tempo can be deadly and no cellist I have ever spoken with would ever play it at that tempo - it's just too difficult to keep the line taut and forward moving when it's played so deathly slow.
If you play softly enough, making the first four bars in one breath will not be a problem. Use some vibrato to warm the tone and allow the line to dynamically ebb and flow as the notes warrant. There is only one climax, at the downbeat of bar 17, but it is not so much loud as it is full of the emotion of tension and release. Throughout the piece, make something of the dissonance/resolution dichotomy and keep the line moving.
Recordings by Casals, Rostropovich, Ma, Starker, Bylsma, and Harrell are in my collection. All are very different and each completely valid. Make your interpretation your own, but work long and hard to play it softly, all the while keeping the tone rich and full.
For more on the Bach Cello Suites, see my FAQ on the Bach Cello Suites.
You can hear me play this excerpt on the 1984 audition tape which I made for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The recording may be found in mp3 format on the Douglas Yeo Boston Symphony Orchestra Audition Tape page of this website.
To download the music of this excerpt as a PDF file which may be read and printed in a high quality output with Adobe Acrobat Reader (free software), click the icon below:
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