Bach Recordings for Interpretation

[nmitchell076]

Hello all,

Throughout my life, the primary pianist who I have turned to when I listen to Bach has been Glenn Gould.  However, now that I am in college, my professor has instructed me not to listen to Glenn when I am trying to find a recording of a piece I am about to play.  Glenn's recordings tend to be very idiosyncratic, and often the interpretation he uses is only effective because of the peculiar way in which he executes it.  Other pianists, so my professor suggests, will have an approach that is seen more "historically informed" and more accessible to assimilation into one's own interpretation then Glenn's are.

The same caution should be given to, according to him, Horowitz interpretations of Scarlatti, which work because he's Horowitz, but wouldn't always work for the general student.

Now, whether or not you agree with any of the above, I understand that Glenn had no qualms about performing pieces the way he felt they should be performed, no matter if the interpretation was considered "correct" or not.  While I think all pianists could benefit from this spirit and mindset, I think it would probably be good for me to get the other side of the coin, to find a pianist who is known to provide a more traditional approach to Bach.

So, anyone able to help me here?

[keyboardclass]

Your teacher's right - Gould's approach is very unBach-like.  I find Samuel Feinberg 's Bach quite good.

[ramseytheii]

I half agree and half disagree with your teacher.  I think it was Bernhard who wrote a while back, that teachers often tell students to stop listening to recordings, but never tell them to skip live performances.  If Gould came to town and happened to be playing your repertoire on his concert, would you really skip it?

That said, to isolate yourself to Gould is, as you sense, probably not productive towards developing your own personal sensibilities.  Rather you should listen to Gould in a range of other artists, both idiosyncratic and otherwise.  He is not the only eccentric, and definitely not the first, to record Bach.  For instance Tatiana Nikolayeva was making very individual performances without having any knowledge of Gould; Landowska's excellent performances are now totally reviled by the "authentic" community, which gives them more credit in my book; Schnabel's few recorded Bach performances are to my ear simply fantastic, and nobody else plays Bach like he does.  Listen especially to the Italian Concerto and the c minor Toccata & Fugue.  (Incidentally, Gould credited Schnabel's recordings with teaching him to "play in paragraphs.")

Then of course you have luminaries who are individual but perhaps closer to "mainstream" thinking on Bach, whatever that is, but that could include Kirkpatrick, Tureck, and the like.  I don't find Hewitt's to be that individual or particularly interesting. 

All kinds of pianists made interesting recordings of Goldberg Variations: Gould has at least three, if you count a live recording made in Salzburg in the 50's; Nikolayeva; Tureck has at least two, possibly more; Gavrilov, interestingly enough; a very interesting recording by Feltsman; Perahia; the list goes on and on.

You should encourage your own creativity by absorbing the approaches of all of these people and more, all of whom had their own ideas and who don't resemble each other in most ways.  You can find something from each of them to take from, and from which to learn.

Walter Ramsey

[keyboardclass]

Then of course you have luminaries who are individual but perhaps closer to "mainstream" thinking on Bach, whatever that is, but that could include Kirkpatrick, Tureck, and the like.  I don't find Hewitt's to be that individual or particularly interesting. 

Me neither, in fact I'm very uninterested.

[camstrings]

Andras Schiff's Bach might be worth considering. The French & English Suites, Preludes & Fugues are the ones I recall. After listening to his Beethoven lectures, I would have faith in his approach to Bach, Mozart & Schubert.

[ramseytheii]

I can't believe I forgot to mention Edwin Fischer, who was playing very idiosyncratic performances of Bach a generation before Gould, and who recorded most of them.

Also, we can learn a lot not only from recordings but from editions.  For instance, Busoni's edition of the Well-Tempered Clavier is a highly erudite, insightful gem.  Bartok's edition of the Well-Tempered Clavier is perhaps not as connected with the source of Bach's art, but gives a lot of insight into a true piano approach to these works.

I think my point in mentioning so many names is that there really is no traditional way to play Bach.  Even those who were at one point considered authoritative, like Landowska, are now considered heretical by "authentic" people.  There are a lot of difficult questions to answer if you want to perform Bach in public, and there is definitely no one right answer.

Remember that most of his works were not written for public performance.  That in itself is a major rebuke for the "authentic" community, who in essence are searching for a style of public performance that reflects Bach's time period.  One of the reasons that those performers I mentioned above can be so illuminating, is that they found solutions to presenting his art before the public, solutions that fit their times.  The performances we hear today may very well go out of style, now matter how "authentic" people consider them.

Walter Ramsey

[keyboardclass]

WAlter's right.  There's plenty of music that's made to be played not listened to.

[starlady]

It's possible to like different interpretations for different reasons, of course if we admit that traffic on the forum would go way down. Anyway, I love Andras Schiff's recordings because they are so clean and, well, transparent: You can hear every note of every trill dropping in with total precision.  I've relied on them a lot in trying to learn the English Suites without a teacher.

--s.

[pianist1976]

I also think that Gould is not a good model to follow. As others said, the way he plays works for him because he's just Gould and he can do it but this way may not work for everyone else. Although I admit that Gould was one of the greatest and he had an immense talent, he's not my cup of tea. He played Bach almost always in an stacatto way, he almost didn't do legato and a distinctive phrasing. I also find his tempi extreme and controversial (extremely slow, extremely fast...).

My favourite interpreters of Bach at the piano are Kempff (marvellous Goldberg and a WTK selections), Busoni (only recorded the 1st prelude and fugue of WTK but... wonderful anyway), Schiff and Ashkenazy (his recording of the WTK has been one of the most pleasant surprises I had in my music live).

[claude_debussy]

What a gang of negative nay-sayers around here!

Glenn Gould is the greatest and most important interpreter of Bach that we've had in the last hundred years, bar none.

Listening to him, intensely and repeatedly, will not hurt you.

Anthony Newman in his very under-appreciated book on Bach and the Baroque

("Bach and the Baroque: European Source Materials from the Baroque and Early Classical Periods With Special Emphais on the Music of J.S. Bach" at Amazon.com)

weighs in against what he calls "urtext performances," a middle-of-the-road approach which respectfully homogenizes down all extremes of possible interpretation, leading to a lukewarm result, medium tempos, medium dynamic range, and boring mediocre expressiveness as a result.

I find Tureck, Hewitt and others to be squarely in that boring "respectful" category, and quite a few of the other pianists not mentioned here as well.  Schiff is okay but he doesn't light my fire at all in this music. 

Gould is always provocative, brilliant, clear, technically immaculate, rhythmically incisive and his approach to Bach articulation set a whole new standard for pianists playing the composer forever after.

What's wrong with any of that!??

Finally, if you want to hear the peak of Gould's Bach interpretations, listen to his rare CD of a live performance at Salzburg in 1959 of the Goldberg Variations, the result of his experiences performing this music on stage, around the world, for several years. 

His public performance history matured his take on the piece in astonishing ways.  Also included on the disk is a partial (tragically flawed in its recording) version of the Bach Sinfonias from Moscow, with playing of staggering beauty and focus.

(Amazon: "Glenn Gould Live in Salzburg & Moscow: Bach: Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 (from Salzburg Festival, 1959); Three-Part Inventions, BWV 788-801 (from Moscow, 1957)"

Don't let anyone keep you away from these treasures -

Teachers should always be filtered through your own perceptions, responses, and deepest musical impulses.  They are never right in every case -   

good luck,

Claude


PS - The Murray Perahia Goldbergs are also beautifully played if you need another perspective

[pianist1976]

What a gang of negative nay-sayers around here!

Easy, please!

What's wrong with any of that!??

There's nothing wrong with that. Do you like Gould? Perfect, there's absolutely no problem with that! But please, respect the opinions of those whom doesn't like his style. I like this forum because I think that it's respectful, open-minded and professional. Please, don't be like those ridiculous myth-keepers at Youtube who insult to everyone who is brave enough to criticize their idols. Fortunately this forum is not Youtube

Glenn Gould is the greatest and most important interpreter of Bach that we've had in the last hundred years

That's YOUR opinion, not an absolute truth.

I find Tureck, Hewitt and others to be squarely in that boring "respectful" category, and quite a few of the other pianists not mentioned here as well.  Schiff is okay but he doesn't light my fire at all in this music.

So you can criticize giants like Tureck or Schiff but we can't criticize Gould... I don't get it. You may think that your opinion is more valuable than ours... That's all I need to read from you. Bye, bye, sir.  

[ramseytheii]

What a gang of negative nay-sayers around here!

Glenn Gould is the greatest and most important interpreter of Bach that we've had in the last hundred years, bar none.

Listening to him, intensely and repeatedly, will not hurt you.

Anthony Newman in his very under-appreciated book on Bach and the Baroque

("Bach and the Baroque: European Source Materials from the Baroque and Early Classical Periods With Special Emphais on the Music of J.S. Bach" at Amazon.com)

weighs in against what he calls "urtext performances," a middle-of-the-road approach which respectfully homogenizes down all extremes of possible interpretation, leading to a lukewarm result, medium tempos, medium dynamic range, and boring mediocre expressiveness as a result.

I find Tureck, Hewitt and others to be squarely in that boring "respectful" category, and quite a few of the other pianists not mentioned here as well.  Schiff is okay but he doesn't light my fire at all in this music. 

Gould is always provocative, brilliant, clear, technically immaculate, rhythmically incisive and his approach to Bach articulation set a whole new standard for pianists playing the composer forever after.

What's wrong with any of that!??

Finally, if you want to hear the peak of Gould's Bach interpretations, listen to his rare CD of a live performance at Salzburg in 1959 of the Goldberg Variations, the result of his experiences performing this music on stage, around the world, for several years. 

His public performance history matured his take on the piece in astonishing ways.  Also included on the disk is a partial (tragically flawed in its recording) version of the Bach Sinfonias from Moscow, with playing of staggering beauty and focus.

(Amazon: "Glenn Gould Live in Salzburg & Moscow: Bach: Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 (from Salzburg Festival, 1959); Three-Part Inventions, BWV 788-801 (from Moscow, 1957)"

Don't let anyone keep you away from these treasures -

Teachers should always be filtered through your own perceptions, responses, and deepest musical impulses.  They are never right in every case -   

good luck,

Claude


PS - The Murray Perahia Goldbergs are also beautifully played if you need another perspective

I agree with most of this, esp. the material on urtext performances, about which I have a lot of philosophical disagreements - but none more important than the actual result, as you describe.

However much I love Gould, I learned a long time ago not to worship any pianist, and I think it is especially bad for a pianist like Gould, who had a deeply personal ideology and style which colored all of his performances, and sometimes in a very negative way - that would be destructive for imitators.

Gould was not interpreting in a vacuum.  He was not always just inventing new ways to interpret, but he was at times deliberately reacting against traditions and opinions of his time.  His horrible recordings of Mozart sonatas are a reaction to the deification of Mozart, and a dedicated mockery of his (Mozart's) homophonic, operatic style.

This attitude seeped over into other performances as well.  In Bach, the one that comes to mind immediately is his recording of the c#-minor fugue from WTC Book I, which seems to me to be deliberately flippant in response to others' view of it as a solemn, Good Friday meditation.

We always have to listen with a critical ear, and put ideas in contexts.  If we start declaring all over the place that only Gould understood Bach, or whatever, then performances like that, where he was being first and foremost provocative, will be totally misunderstood.  And imitations would be a disaster.

Walter Ramsey

[birba]

I have a feeling that claude_debussy is only looking for something transgressive and sensational.  I don't think he is capable of hearing what Turek had to offer, or Kempff, or Landowska, or Backhaus, or any other number of recordings that don't DEFY and PROVOKE, but only PRESENT the music.  It's more difficult, perhaps, to listen to these "purist" interpretations and hear the music.
I, too, am an admirer of Gould.  But as has been pointed out here, he was capable of derision and mockery, as his mozart set out to be.  I've listened to some really phenomonal recordings of his, (and his goldberg - the first recording - is among these) but I've also heard very questionable interpretations that only seem to want to perturb and upset our expectations.