From: Patrice Mathews <mspatrice@email.com>
Date: Wed Mar 29, 2000 1:45am
Subject: [Great Pianists] Re: Argerich's Bach
------Original Message------
From: Patrice Mathews mspatrice@e... To: andrys@n... Sent: March 29, 2000 4:47:10 AM GMT Subject: RE: [Great Pianists] Re: Argerich's Bach
Andrys wrote:
| | Bach is among the most romantic of composers, bar none. |
Well, maybe Scarlatti...!
| | The, to me, idiotic request for more dry playing in Bach shows >very little REAL familiarity with the sound of a harpsichord >which is *never* "staccato" |
Er, I use detache freely. Variation in note durations is one of the relatively few tricks we harpsichordists have at our disposal! That's the challenge. To paraphrase what Leonhardt once said: "How could an instrument so beloved for so long by so many be anything less than surpassingly expressive?"
| | Harpsichords are like BELLS
|
Or lutes, their true parents ;-)
| | the tone does *not* decay in the way a piano quickly does. There's no pedal needed to keep the tone >going ! BUT in piano, that pedal had better be there if >partially emulating the sound of a harpsichord is important to >one. |
I think it's often (not always) an issue of the force of the keystroke (piano) and of holding the note. But then I don't know that emulation is appropriate anyway. Awareness, yes.
| | the tone of notes continued and one had to be very careful so they not smear into other notes in a way that hid the actual >harmonies intended because the tone continued. |
Continued only if one hung onto it! All else is acoustics.
| | I was 4th row center and there was not too much pedaling for >those of us sitting together. Perhaps by the time the sound got >upstairs, there was more smearing.
|
What I heard from first tier right (straight from under the piano lid) was a very convincing transcription, as it should be and as is inevitable. What is the particular virtue of sounding like a harpsichord anyway? Bach wrote down the harmony in his head, non-idiomatically, for a universal instrument that has yet to be invented, even though it exists all around us.
The only qualm I had was with the rhythm in the beginning Adagio. All the 16th-note rests should be dotted, which makes for an even more powerful Frenchified gesture, more air, more sweep, more drama. One could pick at the Courante for similar non-observance of "echt" performance practice but that movement worked for me--I didn't miss the subtle rhythmic shifts.
As a pianist-turned-harpsichordist, I've been more than ever thrilled by Argerich. (And we're talking 30 years of adoration here!) She's not playing just a piano.
--Patrice
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