Bach minuet in G major and G minor - Tempo question

[apple44]

Hello,
I played Bach/Petzold's minutes years ago when I was a kid, and now my child is learnning them. 
I noticed that the tempo on these are three beats = 66 and three beats = 63, which means they are supposed to be played super fast.  I don't recall playing them this fast, so I lookeed up performances on YouTube, and none of them are this fast, and actually some are quite slow, e.g., Lang Lang's performance.

Why do they all play at a slower tempo?  When we try to play every note exactly as it appears on the sheet, why do we ignore the tempo? 

Another question is should students try to memorize the pieces as they play? or is it enough to just be able to play fluently with the sheet music?

Thanks!

[brogers70]

Hello,
I played Bach/Petzold's minutes years ago when I was a kid, and now my child is learnning them. 
I noticed that the tempo on these are three beats = 66 and three beats = 63, which means they are supposed to be played super fast.  I don't recall playing them this fast, so I lookeed up performances on YouTube, and none of them are this fast, and actually some are quite slow, e.g., Lang Lang's performance.

Why do they all play at a slower tempo?  When we try to play every note exactly as it appears on the sheet, why do we ignore the tempo? 

Another question is should students try to memorize the pieces as they play? or is it enough to just be able to play fluently with the sheet music?

Thanks!

They are not ignoring the tempo. Bach generally did not write tempo indications, and the metronome had not been invented, so the tempos you see given in your sheet music are just whatever the editor decided to put there. It's nothing that Bach wrote. Those pieces are dances, so you should not play them so fast that you could not dance gracefully to them. And one good thing about Bach is that his pieces sound good at many different tempos. So I just would not worry about meeting whatever metronome marking the editor happened to put in.

Personally, I think you should memorize, and that your performance will be much more free if you play from memory. But lots of pianists, particularly when playing chember music, use the score.