Bach on the piano

[milk]

This has moments. He really rushes through some some of the preludes and some of the fugues even. But he has moments where he seems to stop and smell the roses. What an interesting life...escaped the Nazis...a Catholic Jew...a student of a student of Chopin...a student of a student of Beethoven...a child prodigy...played before Faure in 1905 and lived to be 100!

[Atriod]

Probably the closest interpretation to the first time I saw Babayan live.

edit: maybe Bach on piano isn't the right thread as Busoni's transcription is a far cry from what Bach composed, but I don't think I've heard Leonhardt's transcription on piano.

[Mandryka]

Tristano. So far it sounds like a pretty conventional straightforward interpretation, in the terms of modern piano circles. Dancy, extrovert, fun.  Party partitas. Pleasantly and closely recorded. The weakness seems to be that Tristano is unable to combine dance rhythms with expressive sophisticated polyphonic music, so the result is shallow and one dimensional.

[Selig]

A complete 4-hands Orgelbüchlein has appeared. The 1912 Kaps piano is pretty closely contemporaneous with the arrangement.

[Selig]

Steinway D (boring!) but with unequal "Bach tuning" by Mark Lindley (unfortunately no more details in the booklet).

From the Book I notes:

I am firmly convinced that Bach himself wanted to use the specific tone colours of the individual tunings and make them glow.

But wouldn't you agree that the transpositions in Bach's own hand that can be found elsewhere in his music speak against that kind of sympathy with key characteristics?
A.P.: Yes, it's true he did transpose pieces elsewhere, but not in this work. The decisive factor for me is that in the keys that make the thirds sound particularly radiant – C major, D major, F major, G major – the composition very consciously makes use of this bright, pure tone with triadic arpeggios, while in other sections of the work, in the B flat minor Prelude and Fugue and elsewhere, the friction in the thirds is obviously also deliberately employed as a compositional element, and that's precisely what that makes the piece so especially interesting.

[prémont]

A complete 4-hands Orgelbüchlein has appeared. The 1912 Kaps piano is pretty closely contemporaneous with the arrangement.

I suppose this arrangement was made with amateur music making at home in mind, at a time where it was rare to experience the original version. Interesting to have heard, but not much more.

Some years ago The Orgelbüchlein was recorded in a version for four cello's. Interesting to have heard, but not much more.

[prémont]

Steinway D (boring!) but with unequal "Bach tuning" by Mark Lindley (unfortunately no more details in the booklet).

From the Book I notes:
A.P.: I am firmly convinced that Bach himself wanted to use the specific tone colours of the individual tunings and make them glow.

But wouldn't you agree that the transpositions in Bach's own hand that can be found elsewhere in his music speak against that kind of sympathy with key characteristics?

A.P.: Yes, it's true he did transpose pieces elsewhere, but not in this work. The decisive factor for me is that in the keys that make the thirds sound particularly radiant – C major, D major, F major, G major – the composition very consciously makes use of this bright, pure tone with triadic arpeggios, while in other sections of the work, in the B flat minor Prelude and Fugue and elsewhere, the friction in the thirds is obviously also deliberately employed as a compositional element, and that's precisely what that makes the piece so especially interesting.

Bach transposed keyboard pieces most of his life. The earliest known examples I can think of from the top of my head are the keyboard arrangements of concerti by Vivaldi and others. Vivaldi's violin concerto in E-major (opus 3/12) was transposed to C-major e.g., and how does Pilsan know that none of the pieces from WTC Book I was transposed?

The idea of tuning a piano unequally sounds interesting, even if I think it will work better with a fortepiano than with a Steinway, because the Steinway's tone is relatively poor in partials.

[Mandryka]

When Toby Sermeus's Silbermann recording was released I remember registering that it was interesting, and then promptly forgot about it until today, when someone asked about piano recordings. It really is special, imaginative quite often (is there a more impressive Partita 5 anywhere?), and somehow piano specific -- I can't explain, you'll have to hear it.

[San Antone]

I consistently enjoy Zhu Xiao-Mei's Bach.