Bach: Well-Tempered Clavier

[Harry]

Or this one?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=frANagdVX4Q

The Verlet is not available on Amazon!
And you are planning to tempt me, I will listen to the Egarr very soon. Keep them coming I'd say

[Traverso]

I could have Leonhardt in a complete edition, good reminder, will look for that one, and if not which version is recommendable?
Glen Wilson it is then, I trust your opinion in this, so its on the order list.
Dantone and Rousset I will listen on Qobuz, and decide if I like them enough or not.
Thank you Que, you brought me a step further in this ongoing journey.
And yes I have Moroney and Asperen.

Glen Wilson is not an easy to find set, so I will try to find this on Qobuz too!

The Glen Wilson is certainly a good recommendation,I have it as part of the Teldec 2000 edition. Rousset is quite quirky in my opinion but tastes differ.

[prémont]

I could have Leonhardt in a complete edition, good reminder, will look for that one, and if not which version is recommendable?

I second the recommendation of Glen Wilson, Ottavio Dantone and Steven Devine.

Others of special interest from the top of my head are Christine Shornsheim, Pieter-Jan Belder, Colin Booth, Masaaki Suzuki, Kenneth Weiss and Kenneth Gilbert. I don't know about Celine Frisch, which I haven't heard yet, despite having owned her set for several years. Christiane Jaccottet has made an unsensational but beautiful version (I think you own this too).

Daniel Chorzempa and Robert Levin are interesting because they use different instruments (harpsichord, clavichord, organ) for the different pieces. Both must be characterized as high-energy players.

Anneke Uittenbosch has made a very worthwhile recording of book II.

On clavichord I prefer Jaroslav Tuma's introvert version to Ralph Kirkpatrick's more extrovert.

Wolfgang Rübsam's version on lute-harpsichord is - if any - an acquired taste, but he may be rewarding if one does the effort.

There are five versions on organ, none of them "perfect". My choice here is Louis Thiry.

I'm not much into piano renderings and own only two (Hans Georg Schäfer and Ivo Janssen) which more than fulfill my need for such a thing.

These posts about WTC rather belong to the WTC thread. Maybe we should ask Que to move them to that thread.

[Que]

Rousset is quite quirky in my opinion but tastes differ.

He is definitely quirky!

[Traverso]

I seconde the recommendation of Glen Wilson, Ottavio Dantone and Steven Devine.

Others of special interest from the top of my head are Christine Shornsheim, Pieter-Jan Belder, Colin Booth, Masaaki Suzuki, Kenneth Weiss and Kenneth Gilbert. i don't know about Celine Frisch, which I haven't heard yet, despite having owned her set for several years. Christiane Jaccottet has made an unsensational but beautiful version (I think you own this too).

David Chorzempa and Robert Levin are interesting because they use different instruments (harpsichord, clavichord, organ) for the different pieces. Both must be characterized as high-energy players.

Anneke Uittenbosch has made a very worthwhile recording of book II.

On clavichord I prefer Jaroslav Tuma's introvert version to Ralph Kirkpatrick's more extrovert.

Wolfgang Rübsam's version on lute-harpsichord is - if any - an acquired taste, but he may be rewarding if one does the effort.

There are five versions on organ, none of them "perfect". My choice here is Louis Thiry.

I'm not much into piano renderings and own only two (Hans Georg Schäfer and Ivo Janssen) which more than fulfill my need for such a thing.

These posts about WTC rather belong to the WTC thread. Maybe we should ask Que to move them to that thread.

And don't forget the recording with a young Leon Berben on Brilliant  ! 

[prémont]

He is definitely quirky!

+1

[Harry]

I seconde the recommendation of Glen Wilson, Ottavio Dantone and Steven Devine.

Others of special interest from the top of my head are Christine Shornsheim, Pieter-Jan Belder, Colin Booth, Masaaki Suzuki, Kenneth Weiss and Kenneth Gilbert. i don't know about Celine Frisch, which I haven't heard yet, despite having owned her set for several years. Christiane Jaccottet has made an unsensational but beautiful version (I think you own this too).

David Chorzempa and Robert Levin are interesting because they use different instruments (harpsichord, clavichord, organ) for the different pieces. Both must be characterized as high-energy players.

Anneke Uittenbosch has made a very worthwhile recording of book II.

On clavichord I prefer Jaroslav Tuma's introvert version to Ralph Kirkpatrick's more extrovert.

Wolfgang Rübsam's version on lute-harpsichord is - if any - an acquired taste, but he may be rewarding if one does the effort.

There are five versions on organ, none of them "perfect". My choice here is Louis Thiry.

I'm not much into piano renderings and own only two (Hans Georg Schäfer and Ivo Janssen) which more than fulfill my need for such a thing.

These posts about WTC rather belong to the WTC thread. Maybe we should ask Que to move them to that thread.

Thanks Poul, with this list I am going into listening period.

[prémont]

And don't forget the recording with a young Leon Berben on Brilliant  ! 

I "forgot" Berben deliberately. I don't like his hectic, pretentious style (fortunately this has changed since then). But the worst thing about it is, that several of the P&F's in modes with many accidentals contain so many wrong notes as to make listening unbearable. Listen eg. to the G-sharp minor fugue from book II.

[Que]

I "forgot" Berben deliberately. I don't like his hectic, pretentious style (fortunately this has changed since then). But the worst thing about it is, that several of the P&F's in modes with many accidentals contain so many wrong notes as to make listening unbearable. Listen eg. to the G-sharp minor fugue from book II.

The young Berben is brilliant at times but overall a mess...

[Harry]

The young Berben is brilliant at times but overall a mess...

+1. It was the reason I discarded this performance.

[Mandryka]

I second the recommendation of Glen Wilson, Ottavio Dantone and Steven Devine.

Others of special interest from the top of my head are Christine Shornsheim, Pieter-Jan Belder, Colin Booth, Masaaki Suzuki, Kenneth Weiss and Kenneth Gilbert. I don't know about Celine Frisch, which I haven't heard yet, despite having owned her set for several years. Christiane Jaccottet has made an unsensational but beautiful version (I think you own this too).

Daniel Chorzempa and Robert Levin are interesting because they use different instruments (harpsichord, clavichord, organ) for the different pieces. Both must be characterized as high-energy players.

Anneke Uittenbosch has made a very worthwhile recording of book II.

On clavichord I prefer Jaroslav Tuma's introvert version to Ralph Kirkpatrick's more extrovert.

Wolfgang Rübsam's version on lute-harpsichord is - if any - an acquired taste, but he may be rewarding if one does the effort.

There are five versions on organ, none of them "perfect". My choice here is Louis Thiry.

I'm not much into piano renderings and own only two (Hans Georg Schäfer and Ivo Janssen) which more than fulfill my need for such a thing.

These posts about WTC rather belong to the WTC thread. Maybe we should ask Que to move them to that thread.

Yes, Harry should hear Suzuki.

I'm listening to Egarr play WTC 2 now for the first time in a long time and something which is probably obvious to everyone has just become clear to me: the purpose of rubato of various kinds, tempo and rhythm, is partly (mainly?) to break up the music into small articulations - some sort of presuppositions à la Harnoncourt driving this thinking presumably (rhetorical macro structure implies speech like micro structure - you just have to say it to see how dubious it is! There's not much scholarship in English about this.)

[prémont]

... the purpose of rubato of various kinds, tempo and rhythm, is partly (mainly?) to break up the music into small articulations - some sort of presuppositions à la Harnoncourt driving this thinking presumably (rhetorical macro structure implies speech like micro structure - you just have to say it to see how dubious it is! There's not much scholarship in English about this.)

Concerning keyboard playing I associate more to Leonhardt than to Harnoncourt, and I tend to say that Leonhardt was the first to introduce true articulation-dependent agogic rubato in his playing.

[Mandryka]

Concerning keyboard playing I associate more to Leonhardt than to Harnoncourt, and I tend to say that Leonhardt was the first to introduce true articulation-dependent agogic rubato in his playing.

Am I right about the logic? That (late?)baroque aesthetics favoured a Quintilian type rhetorical structure on music at the macro level and hence at the micro level baroque music should be articulated like speech? I mean, if so that hence needs a fair bit of justification.

[prémont]

Am I right about the logic? That (late?)baroque aesthetics favoured a Quintilian type rhetorical structure on music at the macro level and hence at the micro level baroque music should be articulated like speech? I mean, if so that hence needs a fair bit of justification.

Why the need to justify the "hence"? A successful speech must be well planned but also well articulated in order to be understandable and also to facilitate the expression of the different affects which are included in the speech.

[milk]

This is good but no bk2 unfortunately.

[Mandryka]

Why the need to justify the "hence"? A successful speech must be well planned but also well articulated in order to be understandable and also to facilitate the expression of the different affects which are included in the speech.

Where affect A is expressed for duration D, it is good that it maps to a phrase of duration D. The problem is that Egarr and others break up the music into units which aren't associated with distinct affects -- so a phrase changes, but not because a new affect is being expressed.

So, let's say a prelude in WTC in Egarr's reading is made up of a temporally contiguous sequence phrases

P1, P2 . . . . Pn

it isn't the case that it can be read as a temporally contiguous sequence of expressed affects

A1, A2 . . . . An

I am sure this isn't just a problem for Egarr!

I also think readability of the phrases in terms of affects is really a big problem. There's no sufficiently detailed translation manual from musical effects to affects -- and as far as I know there's no reason to think there ever was one.



(What do Kooiman and Weinberger say?  )

[prémont]

Where affect A is expressed for duration D, it is good that it maps to a phrase of duration D. The problem is that Egarr and others break up the music into units which aren't associated with distinct affects -- so a phrase changes, but not because a new affect is being expressed.

So, let's say a prelude in WTC in Egarr's reading is made up of a temporally contiguous sequence phrases

P1, P2 . . . . Pn

it isn't the case that it can be read as a temporally contiguous sequence of expressed affects

A1, A2 . . . . An

I am sure this isn't just a problem for Egarr!

I also think readability of the phrases in terms of affects is really a big problem. There's no sufficiently detailed translation manual from musical effects to affects -- and as far as I know there's no reason to think there ever was one.



(What do Kooiman and Weinberger say?  )

Generally in Bach's harpsichord music a given movement is only meant to express one and the same affect, but the affects of different movements may be contrasting eg. a change of affect from prelude to fugue. More difficult would be to put words on these affects, but we are able to hear them in the music.

The sonata form is precisely built upon the contrast of musical affects eg. a cheeky self-affirming main theme and a more lyrical side theme. But Bach isn't Beethoven and baroque isn't Vienna classical.

Albert Schweitzer was to my knowledge the first in our time to write about the relation between musical motives and affects in his book about Bach, particularly doing an analysis of small musical units in the orchestral parts to Bach's cantatas.

Kooiman and Weinberger do not address these issues. They discuss organ technical problems such as registration, fingering and the performance of embellishments.

[Mandryka]

Let's go back to basics and ask the fundamental questions.

Here's Egarr in 870/prelude.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUu8VySlGPk&ab_channel=RichardEgarr-Topic


You see he's broken it up into short phrases.

Why?

Egarr is a good one to take because the articulation is so incredibly clear, partly because he takes his time.


For contrast, here's Edwin Fischer in the same music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ty7qoFFdoE&ab_channel=EdwinFischer-Topic

[prémont]

Let's go back to basics and ask the fundamental questions.

Here's Egarr in 870/prelude.


You see he's broken it up into short phrases.

Why?

Because the music is made up of small musical cells. He wants to display this, and I on my part is convinced that the prelude should be played in this way. Long legato lines are a later phenomenon.

But I also think he displays the affect of the music wrong (well, of course I may be wrong), because in these ears (and eyes) the prelude expresses festive joy, whereas Egarr seems to think that it expresses resignation .

For contrast, here's Edwin Fischer in the same music

I would like a more refined and distinctly articulated touch. And his fiddling with the dynamics is besides the point. And which affect does he display?       

[San Antone]

I love the sound of Egarr's instrument.  But I don't hear what you describe, i.e. "he's broken it up into short phrases."  What I hear is a deliberate rubato basically in line with the musical phraseology as Bach wrote it.  However, his deliberate rubato begins to sound somewhat turgid after 3.5 minutes.

The Fischer, OTOH, is a bit too straight-forward for my taste, plus on piano it lacks the aural profile that Egarr's beautiful harpsichord provides.

For me, my ideal lies somewhere in between these two approaches, although much closer to Egarr than Fischer.