Handel: suites for keyboard recommendations?

I really like Keith Jarrett's performances, recorded on piano, which I think gives extra richness and depth to the music.




Best,
Fred

Händels harpsichord music is not pianomusic. The extra dimension which a rendering on piano can add is for stylistic reasons largely unasked for. But each to his own.

My favored (harpsichord)versions are:

Lutger Remy (CPO)

and

Ottavio Dantone (Arts music)

both adding a rather stylish (IMO) improvisational element to the music.

Equally interesting to me dear pe zulu.

Thanks from George

Thanks, Fred, I have the Jarrett and love it.
and
Thanks, Pe zulu, understood. I should have said I was looking for piano renditions, since I don't play harpsichord.....

Chas

quote:

Originally posted by pe-zulu:
Händels harpsichord music is not pianomusic. The extra dimension which a rendering on piano can add is for stylistic reasons largely unasked for. But each to his own.

Unasked for by whom?

If intention is the criteria, the one thing we for sure don't know is what Handel would have thought of this music played on a modern piano ... he might have loved it, Jarrett's version in particular, which seems deeply faithful to the music to my ears.

Besides which, modern piano and harpsichord versions of all manner of music composed before the advent of the modern piano have coexisted peacefully, complementing each other in welcome ways ... I see no reason to be limited to one or the other, let's have it all!

Best,
Fred

Unasked for in the very way the music is written I would sumise ...

Dynamic is given by the number of notes to be played over period of time rather than how hard the keys are presssed.

Coping with the problem of how to get a paino to sound well in harpsichord music without completely transforming the music away from what the composer had in mind is not so easy, or managed all that often! I know some people like to hear harpsichord music on the piano. I cannot get on with what results, though would never argue that others cannot. I would personally never recommend any harpsichord music played on the piano in preference to a good performance on the harpsichord, and in extremis only as a second version for the sake of comparison. That is just me though ...

ATB from George

George, that's valid, and understood. Yet, in the case of the Handel/Jarrett, it's just done so well, and fun, that it doesn't matter to me.
Maybe it's like hearing a transcription, which I usually like. Love the ones Thibaudet does on London, of the Lizst transcriptions and opera without words.
I live in an old house, around the turn of the century, with a piano in the parlor. I love the idea that people gave recitals here of various music, for the piano or transcribed for it. Maybe hifi has superceded all that for most of you. For me, when the power's out for hours and I need a tune, Handel on the piano does quite nicely.

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:

Coping with the problem of how to get a piano to sound well in harpsichord music without completely transforming the music away from what the composer had in mind is not so easy, or managed all that often!

But that's my point ... we can't really know what the composer had in mind. We can't know to what extent the keyboard instruments of the composer's time represented the ideal of musical expression, or merely the then current state of technology with its inherent compromises.

For all we know, if Handel were to hear his keyboard suites played exquisitely on a modern piano, he might very well say "That's what I had in mind! Screw these inexpressive harpsichords!"

Best,
Fred

Dear Fred,

I have a lovely amiable post in me on this, which I hope you will find not even vague offense in!

May I post it for you tomoorrow? Or Saturday?

If the Organ is the King of instruments and the Piano the Queen, then the Harpsichord is certainly the Holy Ghost - and the transcendentally more expressive keyboard instrument than any either, and not least because the physical confines require such address from the player that it is arguably the best but also the most ascetic option for music conceived for it, when played by artists of the highest calibre. There is only one pair of pianists I find convincing in this music actiually, E Fischer, and A Schnabel. H Walcha on the harpsichord is far in front of either in terms of of hearty expression, or even beauty of sound.

Please read my reasoning, before writing off the old harpsichord as inexpressive.

In my view both Bach, and Handel knew exactly what they doing when presenting the music in scores intented for performance on the harpsichord. They would have written music cast entirely differently had they had the piano in mind, IMO ...

Haydn also, and he adopted to piano in mid-stream and altered his compositions to match the possibilities of the newly perfected instrument - the piano.


Though I hope to make a valid point, I would add that I am always glad anyone is passionate about Bach, or Handel's harpsichord music even if they do enjoy it on the piano!

ATB from George

quote:

and the transcendentally more expressive keyboard instrument than any either

speaking of queens, what a load of....
I'll leave you to it...

If I understood your point, then I could attempt a sensible answer. As you see fit to quote from my post above - and at a partial quotation which certains allows for the original meaning to be mistaken - I ask you if you would be kind enough to clarify your meaning before considering if your point is something I can usefully reply to.

ATB from George

Dear soundsreal,

Yop seem to have initiated a thread on a quest, but already with a firm view of what you want to hear.

Fred Simon, who is a musician and keyboard players of some note and recorded on the Naim label, suggests you investigate Handel's harpsichord music as played by a Jazz musician on the piano.

I have no doubt that these performance would yield interesting tangents on thre music. However, I am certian that a great series of performances on the harpsichord such as Walcha [or Leonhardt] gave in the Bach harpsichord pieces would reveal far more of the musical expressive content of the scores than any performance series, even by such great pianists as E Fischer or A Schnabel, on the piano.

You would find harpsichord performances far more expressive than what could be managed on the piano, I am sure, in just the same way that if a harpsichord player atttmpted to play a Brahms Piano Concerto, or the Debussy Preludes on the old instrument, then a great performance on the intended instrument, in those cases the piano, would certainly come closer to what the composer had in mind ...

ATB from George

Dear George,
Thank you for your very kind consideration of my thread.
I do indeed enjoy the Keith Jarrett on ECM since its release. I only wish it were on vinyl.
I do understand your post, I do not fully agree.
I think all the instruments you mention are equal in their given field. I do not think one more expressive than another. Perhaps it was a misstep to some, but I discovered the Handel suites through the piano. I do not consider it a bad transcription, as if Yanni or John Tesh got a hold of it, rather something quite beautiful on its own, as Fred has stated. Would i have been better off if I had not discovered it in this way, or not at all?
Very sincerely
Chas

Dear soundsreal,

I always start from the point of being glad a person enjoys the music of Bach, Handel, Haydn, and so on even if they are listening to performances of it on an anacronystic instruemnt.

Better to find great music than rule it out for example, because as an individual you may perhaps dislike the instrument it was intended for ...

I know peopple who find the actual sound of a harpsichord not enjoyable. I actually prefer the harpsichord to the piano in the old repertoire, where the harpsichord was the instrument of choice ...

Thanks for joining in the exchange. George

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:

Fred Simon, who is a musician and keyboard players of some note and recorded on the Naim label, suggests you investigate Handel's harpsichord music as played by a Jazz musician on the piano.

Keith Jarrett is a musician, period. He plays all sorts of music with equal expertise, on a variety of keyboard instruments.

quote:

... a great performance on the intended instrument ... would certainly come closer to what the composer had in mind

Again, we simply can't know how those composers would have reacted to their music as played on a modern piano. One possibility is that they would have rejected it as inappropriate. And, obviously, another possibility is that they would have preferred it.

In comparing harpsichord and a modern piano, of course there are pros and cons for each; certain expressive aspects of the music benefit from each. But, again, a crucial factor is that we can't know whether the music written for harpsichord in the 17th century was intended for an instrument considered to be the ultimate in musical expression, or, rather, the available technology with its inherent limitations.

There are fundamental musical reasons that Cristofori and others tried to improve and expand then current keyboard technology, and it's instructive to note that once the piano came into common use, harpsichord fell more and more out of favor. Of course, there are many other issues related to this trend, but one of the most apparent is that composers found a wider palette of dynamic and tonal expression available on the piano.

For the most part, the palette of expression available on, for instance, a violin, reached its zenith centuries ago. But since the keyboard is a much more complicated mechanism, its evolution was still in process at the time of Handel, Bach, etc. So we come back to the question we just cannot answer: had the modern piano been available would these composers have preferred it? Maybe, maybe not. And would they have written differently for it if it had? Maybe, maybe not. Aside from whatever justifications for one's personal taste in the matter one can offer, this will always be a question we can't definitively answer.

Best,
Fred

You're very welcome, George. Do you have a recording on harpsichord of these works by Handel? And, since you might know, how are these works viewed by the critics? Great, or mediocre?
Thanks and take care.

Dear soundsreal,

Not on the harpsichord, but Ritcher's set with one half played by Richter and the other half played by Gavrilov, but all played on the piano. An EMI issue.

It has never been a set I could enjoy, and was a gift from a pianp playing friend of mine, [who was a pupil of Bernard Roberts and so a grand pupil of Artur Schnabel].

So I was glad to read what pe zulu wrote as a recommendation as it was from him [and R de S] that I found the great Bach series of recordings of Walcha and Leonhardt, that are among my very favourite recordings of any music.

My search for great performances of the Handel suites has not been successful so far!

ATB from George

PS: A currently active harpsichord player I admire very much is Richard Egar, who I imagine will make recordings in the repertoire eventually that will be very fine if they match what he achieves in concert.

Deasr Fred,

Both Handel and Bach were masters of the possible in the instruments they wrote for, and whilst pragmatic to some degree in both cases about performance of their music on inappropriate instrumetns, when given the chance they both would carefully recast their music for other instruments if that is what the possible performing forces were comprised of, rather than leave it to chance what effect might result, however fine the performers on the "wrong" instruments might potentially be.

Bach's various concerti that are fornd in two [or more] forms are not simply transcriptions but wholesale reworkings that allows for the musical ideas to be most effectively auditioned by optimising for the instruments used. This frequently even resulted in altered rhythms, and even recasting of the harmonic framework and architecture of proportiuons of structural sections of the music, as much as altering deatils of thematic presentation, and I see no reason to suppose that given a piano that had dynamic constrast in the weight of touch, that Bach would have written in the same way for it as he did the harpsichord.

Bach knew of and completlely ignored the possibilitiy of the piano in his own time.

Handel seems not to have encountered the piano in England at all.

But Handel wrote also music that is wonderfully characterised for the specific instruments he chose to score for. He pushes his players to the limits that wetre possible on their instruments on occasion just as Bach had done as well. His music is "playable" for he understaood exactly the possibilities of the instruments that he was writing for, and say his flute lines are indeed different toi his violin lines, his basoon lines different to his cello lines, and so on ...

Once again I think it is wrong to begin to suppose that Handel would not have written his keyboard music differently had he had a satisfactory piano that the performance would be given on instead of the harpsichord in its various guises.

An example where a great composer wrote significantly for both instruments is the series of keyboard Sonatas by Haydn, where the difference between his idiomatic writing for both instruments producers results that were so stylistically different that today today it is considered suitable and correct to perform the early works on the harpsichord and the later works - specifically designed for the new "fortepiano" - on a piano. There is a relatively new series of recordings of the Haydn keyboard works which makes this exact change of instrument, as originally intended by the composer, because each instrument best serves the p[articular style that Haydn uses in his laying out of the music for the piano in the later works or the harpsichord in the earlier works.

So whilst I agree that we can never know for a one hundreed per cent certainty that Handel or Bach would have made any change in compositional style to account for the piano, had they intended that instrument for performance, it is almost completely certain that they actually would have written radically different music for the radically different instrument, and music that optimally employed the capacities whyich the new instrument offered - and which, therefore, would dictate that the very intended instrument [written for in a style that accounts for its strengths and expressive possibilities] is the one which is best used for recordings and contempary performances, at least as an aim ...

ATB from George