Bach Six Partitas

Started by mc ukrneal, January 25, 2010, 05:35:03 AM

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Que

Quote from: Mandryka on April 01, 2018, 11:58:54 PM
I thought the last thing he did was unlistenable. Transcriptions for two harpsichords of opera music by Rameau. Of course it may have been the music which put me off.



I have that, definitely a crazy disc.  :)

But he can play Bach - his Art of the Fugue in the Brilliant Bach Edition (1999) is one of the best interpretations I know.

Q

aukhawk

Quote from: Archaic Torso of Apollo on April 01, 2018, 03:55:49 PM
I've been revisiting James Weaver's version - on LP only, part of a big Smithsonian Bach box that came out in the late 1970s.

A great-sounding late analog recording with a very precise, light harpsichord tone, easy on the ears. Weaver attacks this music with a lot of energy and it sounds frenetic at times, with a swinging, improvisatory feel that reminds me of Scarlatti. This is very far from "cosmic" Bach. An unusual approach perhaps, but I like it a lot as a contrast to my more standard piano versions by Perahia and Sheppard.

I've seen a theory somewhere that Bach's Partitas show the influence of Scarlatti.  It seems a bit unlikely to me, not least because the publication dates don't stack up - Scarlatti's 30 Essercizi were published a handful of years after Bach's Partitas - though that says nothing about the composition dates of course.  Nor is there any evidence of contact between the two men - not like there is between Scarlatti and Handel for instance.

Wakefield

Quote from: Que on April 02, 2018, 12:31:40 AM
he can play Bach - his Art of the Fugue in the Brilliant Bach Edition (1999) is one of the best interpretations I know.

Q

I think the same. And, IMO, his Toccatas are at the same level.

He also recorded a fantastic disk with Müthel's music, played on clavichord.  :)



"One of the greatest misfortunes of honest people is that they are cowards. They complain, keep quiet, dine and forget."
-- Voltaire

Que

Quote from: Gordo on April 02, 2018, 01:33:55 AM
I think the same. And, IMO, his Toccatas are at the same level.

He also recorded a fantastic disk with Müthel's music, played on clavichord.  :)

+1 (2X)  8)

Mandryka

Quote from: Gordo on April 02, 2018, 01:33:55 AM
I think the same. And, IMO, his Toccatas are at the same level.

He also recorded a fantastic disk with Müthel's music, played on clavichord.  :)

There's also the Bach sonatas with violin accompaniment by Johannes Leertouwer, and an Opfer.
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Archaic Torso of Apollo

Quote from: aukhawk on April 02, 2018, 01:14:57 AM
I've seen a theory somewhere that Bach's Partitas show the influence of Scarlatti.  It seems a bit unlikely to me, not least because the publication dates don't stack up - Scarlatti's 30 Essercizi were published a handful of years after Bach's Partitas - though that says nothing about the composition dates of course.  Nor is there any evidence of contact between the two men - not like there is between Scarlatti and Handel for instance.

All true. However, this is really just my response to the interpretation - saying "it sounds a bit like Scarlatti" is not the same as saying "this must have been influenced by Scarlatti."
formerly VELIMIR (before that, Spitvalve)

"Who knows not strict counterpoint, lives and dies an ignoramus" - CPE Bach

premont

Quote from: Archaic Torso of Apollo on April 02, 2018, 06:51:44 AM
All true. However, this is really just my response to the interpretation - saying "it sounds a bit like Scarlatti" is not the same as saying "this must have been influenced by Scarlatti."

I think it is the Goldberg variations which have been mentioned as being influenced by Scarlatti, not the partitas.
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milk

Quote from: aukhawk on April 02, 2018, 01:14:57 AM
I've seen a theory somewhere that Bach's Partitas show the influence of Scarlatti.  It seems a bit unlikely to me, not least because the publication dates don't stack up - Scarlatti's 30 Essercizi were published a handful of years after Bach's Partitas - though that says nothing about the composition dates of course.  Nor is there any evidence of contact between the two men - not like there is between Scarlatti and Handel for instance.
I don't hear this at all. Hmm...I'd like to see the quote. What aspect of it I wonder?

Mandryka

#168
Quote from: milk on April 02, 2018, 06:57:40 AM
I don't hear this at all. Hmm...I'd like to see the quote. What aspect of it I wonder?

All the trills in var 14 maybe. Did Scarlatti write a lot of AABB stuff?
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premont

Quote from: Mandryka on April 02, 2018, 07:07:51 AM
All the trills in var 14 maybe. Did Scarlatti write a lot of AABB stuff?

As well as all Scarlatti's sonatas are AABB stuff.
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Mandryka

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aukhawk

Quote from: (: premont :) on April 02, 2018, 06:55:15 AM
I think it is the Goldberg variations which have been mentioned as being influenced by Scarlatti, not the partitas.

Only if one is viewed as the antidote to the other, surely?  ;)  Like comparing mogadon with caffeine  ;)

(Yes, I think it was the AABB structure that was being referred to in the 'theory' I originally mentioned, from a sleevenote I think.  I must say I wasn't aware it was that much of an innovation, whoever adopted it first.)

premont

Quote from: aukhawk on April 02, 2018, 09:28:13 AM
Only if one is viewed as the antidote to the other, surely?  ;)  Like comparing mogadon with caffeine  ;)

(Yes, I think it was the AABB structure that was being referred to in the 'theory' I originally mentioned, from a sleevenote I think.  I must say I wasn't aware it was that much of an innovation, whoever adopted it first.)

The AABB structure has been used for dance movements in keyboard suites since the beginning (e.g. Froberger), so I do not understand, that this feature as such should remind of Scarlatti. And if we in Bach's music seek stylistic and formal influence from Scarlatti, we should rather think of the obviously late Fantasia c-minor (the one with the unfinished fugue) or some of the preludes from WTC II (g-sharp minor, a-minor e.g.).

Someone (forgot whom) thought, that the 30 variations of the Goldberg's was an allution to Scarlatti's 30 Essercizi per Gravicembalo K 1 - 30, the only of his sonatas which were published while Scarlatti was alive.
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aukhawk

Yeh well - exact contemporaries, but Scarlatti something of a late developer - no reason at all to suppose their spheres ever intersected at all - I'm sorry I raised it! 
:-[ :-\

Mandryka

Glen Wilson thinks that Martini is a bigger influence on the Goldbergs than Scarlatti

http://www.glenwilson.eu/musician.html

QuoteAnother contemporary virtuoso who undoubtedly jolted Bach into an effort to emulate and surpass was Domenico Scarlatti. In the late 30's and early 40's of the eighteenth century, dozens of his Sonatas were published in London, Paris, and Amsterdam, and some of them must have come into the hands of Bach, who was always on the lookout for the latest in musical trends and even ran a kind of sales agency for music. Just as the publication of Handel's Suites in 1721 may have goaded Bach into issuing the Partitas, so the Thomaskantor was not the man to allow Scarlatti's quantum leap in idiomatic, virtuoso keyboard style to pass without a response. I would also mention, as pure speculation, another publication by an Italian: G. B. ("Padre") Martini's harpsichord Sonatas, superbly engraved at Amsterdam sometime around 1740. The date usually given is 1742, the year the Goldberg Variations are thought to have been published. But neither work can be dated with certainty, and it is also possible Bach knew the Sonatas in manuscript. In any case Martini's print contains two sets of Aria and Variations, a Corrente in Canon, and figuration and ornamentation more similar to those in Bach's work than any other I know of. Martini's whole language is more baroque than that of the "galant keyboard player" (as Quantz calls him) Scarlatti. Strangely enough, Bach's youngest son Johann Christian later studied counterpoint with Martini, who was to Italy what J. S. Bach was to Germany: the rear guard of the retreating polyphonic tradition.

(He comes across as such a grump in the essay on harpsichord and organ

http://www.glenwilson.eu/musician.html)

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premont

Quote from: Mandryka on April 02, 2018, 09:53:58 AM
Glen Wilson thinks that Martini is a bigger influence on the Goldbergs than Scarlatti

Well, the greatest influence on the Goldbergs was probably Buxtehude's Aria La Capricciosa variations.
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SurprisedByBeauty

Quote from: (: premont :) on April 02, 2018, 12:06:04 PM
Well, the greatest influence on the Goldbergs was probably Buxtehude's Aria La Capricciosa variations.

So many influences! Incl. Frescobaldi's Bergamasca in which Frescobaldi varies the "Bergamasca melody" that is at the base of Bach's quodlibet of "Kraut und Rüben / haben mich vertrieben" and "Ich bin so lang nicht bey dir g'west".

http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2009/12/grab-it-while-you-can-frescobaldis.html

Mandryka

Don't forget HWV 442, a chaconne. Listen to the Gräbner harpsichord here, I can't find a lighter and more delicate and nuanced performance on youtube I'm afraid.

https://www.youtube.com/v/uJecU5LZR90
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premont

I find Kraus' articulation oldfashioned overdone in a pianistic way, and the work as such is very patience-consuming for the player as well as for the listener IMO.  I prefer this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJZAt3a2a7A
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Mandryka

I can't bear the harpsichord, I mean I can imagine it as continuo but either Kraus doesn't play it well or it's just not a very refined instrument.
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