Piano Forum



A Life with Beethoven – Moritz Winkelmann
What does it take to get a true grip on Beethoven? A winner of the Beethoven Competition in Bonn, pianist Moritz Winkelmann has built a formidable reputation for his Beethoven interpretations, shaped by a lifetime of immersion in the works and instruction from the legendary Leon Fleisher. Eric Schoones from the German/Dutch magazine PIANIST had a conversation with him. Read more >>

Topic: Bach music  (Read 1223 times)

Offline softbn

  • PS Silver Member
  • Jr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 28
Bach music
on: July 08, 2022, 10:34:25 AM
Hello. Since Bach didn’t play the piano but organ, which has no dynamics - when playing Bach on the piano - should the left hand be as loud as the right hand - imitating the organ ?
Johann Sebastian Bach:
- Top pieces & piano scores to download
- Biography & quotes
- Related forum topics & articles

Offline brogers70

  • PS Silver Member
  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 1697
Re: Bach music
Reply #1 on: July 08, 2022, 11:50:10 AM
If you want to play the organ, play the organ. If you want to play the harpsichord, play the harpsichord. Do you think Bach instructed his string players or his singers not to shape their phrases dynamically because you could not do that on the organ or the harpsichord? From the time of Bach onward people adapted his music to the tastes and capabilities of their own times (Czerny altered the written notes, Mozart rescored Handel, so I doubt he tried to make his pianoforte sound like a harpsichord when he played Bach, Busoni made huge Romantic piano arrangements of Bach pieces, Mendelssohn rewrote some of the harmonies in the St Matthew Passion to suit his taste, you can hear well-known pianistic Bach specialists like Roselyn Turek, strongly emphasizing the entrance of each voice in a fugue). It was only in the mid-20th century that people started trying to imitate the way they thought Bach would have sounded in Bach's own time. Many of those performances are beautiful and interesting, but I think if you are going down the road of historical authenticity, you shouldn't be playing Bach on the piano at all.
 

Logo light pianostreet.com - the website for classical pianists, piano teachers, students and piano music enthusiasts.

Subscribe for unlimited access

Sign up

Follow us

Piano Street Digicert