Chicago Symphony bassist (and my former teacher!) Michael Hovnanian has been busy recording his own arrangement of the six Marcello Sonatas for two basses, playing both parts himself and posting the MP3s online.

Michael goes into much more detail about this project (with lots of great asides and details about why he’s doing this) on his site, but here’s short excerpt about the project:

The basic outline of the project, which I will describe more in detail as it progresses, is to record the 6 Sonatas for Solo violoncello with a thoroughbass for the harpsichord, by Benedetto Marcello, arranged for two double basses (by me). Since the point of the exercise is to see for myself whether or not I can play the instrument, the recordings would be of complete takes of each movement, and I would not resort to any sort of editing, pitch correction, or other digital wizardry to make the end product more palatable to the ear.

Follow along with Michael as he records these sonatas, and check out the audio results online here.

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