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How do you like your Bach?
Topics: 3 Posts: 108
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Created over 2 years ago, Modified over 2 years ago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7LWANJFHEs&feature=fvw This clip includes 7 variations as well as the Goldberg Variations' Aria, performed by Glenn Gould. The comments, as well as the music, are interesting, starting with: 'Wow! I can't believe this has over a million hits. I think the internet is allowing "classical" music (I think it should be called art music) to really reach people who would normally have no exposure to it. A new found interest in it by the public maybe?'... Then other users join in and there's an impromptu discussion. Worth a read :) Glenn Gould has two tempi for the Goldberg Variations on YouTube - the 1964 earlier version is faster. Other pianists who have a rapport with Bach include Angela Hewitt. Her YouTube Prelude and Fugue in G Major is delightful.
Re transcription, Brendel's final London concert in the RFH was a performance of a Mozart Concerto. His encore - a Bach/Busoni transcription. Reading the info on the Bach/Stokowski YouTube video mentioned in a previous post by Andrew, it seems that Stokowski was the consultant for the D minor Toccata and Fugue orchestral version on Disney's Fantasia. I've never seen the full film, but the Toccata clip is on YouTube (as are others from Fantasia). Does that explain the popularity of the work, I wonder, if so many family members of all ages at the time must have seen/heard it... otherwise how else did it become so well known... ______________________ Louise |
Topics: 43 Posts: 61
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Created over 2 years ago Going back the Russians and their Bach, has anyone heard the new recording of the Art of Fugue by Vladimir Feltsman (Nimbus NI2549/50)? It's old school. Expansive, dramatic, each movement building up to a shattering climax. But it's reverential too, with a fairly heavy (Russian?) touch throughout and precise tempo proportions maintained between the movements. Kind of like Glen Gould but without the angst. Well worth a listen. |
Topics: 0 Posts: 55
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Created over 2 years ago I've only heard clips online; it's interesting to speculate whether the Art of Fugue was written for performance or as an intellectual exercise. Re the resilience of Bach, cellist Matthew Barley writes about playing to a group of prisoners - 'Different audiences need different approaches. I did a concert in Winchester prison three years ago to 40 hard-bitten offenders. As soon as I was in the room I realised that if I just started to play my cello there was no way I was going to win this lot over at all — they were tough. I sat there for a few seconds with my heart in my mouth wondering what to do. Then somebody in the crowd looked at my computer set-up and asked what software I was using, so I began talking about music technology and demonstrating how it worked. I ended playing solo Bach. A guy at the back in his sixties had tears running down his face. “I never knew something so beautiful existed,” he said. He wasn’t aware of that type of music. He’d never seen a cello in his life.' |
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Topics: 0 Posts: 55
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Created over 2 years ago Re the Art of Fugue, my curiosity led to an email to renowned Bach expert, John O'Donnell, who replied as follows -
'I've no doubt that the writing of any fugue is an intellectual exercise, and since the Art of Fugue is arguably the greatest fugal accomplishment by the greatest of musical intellects, it is without doubt an intellectual exercise. But I'm sure that it's much more, and the audiences who've responded to my (and no doubt other) performances of it over the years agree. But we don't need to speculate. Bach wrote most of it on two staves in the way he wrote his other keyboard fugues and simply had it printed in open score following a tradition that went back at least as far as Frescobaldi's polyphonic keyboard works and includes Bach's own Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her, whose title page tells us that it's for a two-manual organ, and the six-voice Ricercar of the Musical Offering, for which we have CPE Bach's testimony that it was written for keyboard. Then there's the editorial note accompanying the first print of Art of Fugue directing it to harpsichordists and organists. And there's also the writing itself, which fits the hands beautifully, and one can point to places where Bach has adjusted individual lines to ensure that they do fit the hands. In the case of the mirror fugues this assumes hands the size of Bach's, and the fact that he arranged one of the mirror fugues for two harpsichords is presumably an acknowledgment that he realised that the original would be off limits to some. Perhaps he intended to do a similar thing with the other mirror fugue. I'm fortunate enough to be able to reach all notes in both of them.'
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Topics: 10 Posts: 34
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Created over 2 years ago Here are my all-time favourite Bach recordings: and: So different, no? Yet they are still so brilliant. Bach can be played any way you like, so long as it is convincing. There is no right and no wrong style, and I'm pleased to see that many people seem to get that now. There's a great place for authenticity, but it's not all we should be aiming for, it's just another style of playing just like McFerrin and Milstein. I have to say that Stokowski's Bach is not the type I'd choose to listen to for fun. It has a certain imposing grandeur, perhaps... :) ______________________ http://www.simonhewittjones.com/ |
Topics: 0 Posts: 3
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Created about 1 year ago In any serious consideration of Bach and his music it is paramont to remember that he was not human. What he did is simply beyond the limits of human endevor. If you are a musician then you already know this: Bach is like a mountain and we don't even have a shovel. Bach is as relentless as gravity but more pervasive. Bach conditions the unwary into thinking logical thoughts thus making them misearble outcasts. We can gain an appreciation of Bach, not so much by looking at his music, it is as blinding as the sun, but by looking at the musicains who have fallen under its spell. Not the least of these was Leopold Stowkowski. Ah what I would give to be there the day Stowkoski discoverd.. his hands. The non-musical off spring of JS Bach Incorporated also provide a glimpse in the mans character to say nothing of his stamina. There was a Bach who became an accountant CPA Bach and the one who worked in primiative computers CPU and the Bach who drove an ambulance CPR But my favorite is the Bach who left home and traveled to America where he settled in Virgina and became a tobacco grower, the redoubtable LSMFT Bach Last and probably least there was the philosopher Bach, the one who asked very hard questions about everything.. WTF Bach More in our next lesson. |
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