New Bach Brandenburg Recording
Posted by: u5227470736789439 on 22 February 2008
A couple of days ago, I listened to the Third Brandenburg Concerto played by a crack band of HIP musicians directed by Trevor Pinnock, newly issued on the Avie label.
I have long had a quite large admiration for Pinnock as a no nonsense interpreter of Bach and Handel, and occasionally responsible for some great and revelatory performances on records/CDs.
When I saw that he was revisiting the Brandenburg Concertos in the recording studio I was delighted. I thought the years since his first effort for DG in the 1980s, and still one of the best recommendations for a first recording of them, would have deepened his understanding and potentially brought some very fine music making forward.
But sadly I have to say not. Like so many recording these works, Mr Pinnock seems to have been unable to avoid the temptation to use the gimmickry of playing about with the music in the actual sense of altering the texts. The First Movement kicks off well enough. Plenty of energy, though a tempo just too fast to allow for much light and shade in the music, but how much is allowed is a question of taste rather than anything that can be said to be definitely wrong. The pair of full chords that amount to a Cadence that is all Bach left for a Second Movement are augmented with a massive [and far too long IMO, of course] Violin Cadenza, which seems curiously out of place.
But the real shock is the Third Movement. This movement makes no quarter for the players' technique at all, and requires the three 'celli, and one double bass to play all the notes that the violins play at different times - at their different octaves of course.
The fact that the movement kicks of in the high strings and the 'celli, and bass only enter on the third beat of the second bar is no excuse for saying what they play need be less clear than the violins' parts as it is already in imitation, already stated, as the second half launches with a significantly altered variant of the original motif in the 'celli, and bass, later imitated by the upper strings. Well normally it does, but what Pinnock does amounts to Philistine butchery of Bach's clearly written intentions!
Immediately it is obvious that the basic tempo is probably much too fast to allow the bass line to be articulated, and I wondered how on earth it would be! It isn't, because it isn't even played. The 'celli play what is written, and it is curiously unclear, but worst of all Pinnock has rewritten the bass-line so what the bass does play, is audible but completely transformed!
He allows the bass to play the first note in every group of three, in the groups of twelve in each bar, so we get a bass note every on each beat of the bar, and not the runs that Bach wrote. Elsewhere in the music Bach uses exactly this way of writing in the bass [with 'celli playing the same line an octave above] as a contrast to the beautiful swaying bass-line that occurs when twelve notes per bar are written and played. He wrote this contrast into the very music, which Pinnock seems to find fit to sacrifice this aspect on the alter of his own conception of it.
Tempi are a matter of taste. Rewriting the text is a matter for serious objection, especially when the choice of a more reasonable tempo would have allowed for the music to be played as written. One might almost say, to be played authentically. But yet this performance claims to be informed by "authentic" HIP practice.
I wish the recordings could be offered as Bach arranged Pinnock, and then this change would be flagged up!
This is not a satisfactory solution to the age-old problem of what speed to go in the music. HM Linde solves it with a wonderfully swung, and quite steady tempo, allowing every nuance out, and Reinhardt Goebel manages it by having such a phenomenal bass player who managed to play the part at a very, very fast speed! Though the result is hardly expressive as music making, it is a remarkable piece of playing from the technical standpoint. It is very closely recorded, so the detail is not lost, so in that case the recording became as much part of an extreme concept as the actual playing ...
Both cases, Pinnock and Goebel, reduce the possible contrasts as they limit the nuance a player can bring to his part, and Pinnock compounds this with a senseless adjustment to the texts. Why?
I really wondered whether to post this, but then I felt I really should! I generally hate negativity ...
George
I have long had a quite large admiration for Pinnock as a no nonsense interpreter of Bach and Handel, and occasionally responsible for some great and revelatory performances on records/CDs.
When I saw that he was revisiting the Brandenburg Concertos in the recording studio I was delighted. I thought the years since his first effort for DG in the 1980s, and still one of the best recommendations for a first recording of them, would have deepened his understanding and potentially brought some very fine music making forward.
But sadly I have to say not. Like so many recording these works, Mr Pinnock seems to have been unable to avoid the temptation to use the gimmickry of playing about with the music in the actual sense of altering the texts. The First Movement kicks off well enough. Plenty of energy, though a tempo just too fast to allow for much light and shade in the music, but how much is allowed is a question of taste rather than anything that can be said to be definitely wrong. The pair of full chords that amount to a Cadence that is all Bach left for a Second Movement are augmented with a massive [and far too long IMO, of course] Violin Cadenza, which seems curiously out of place.
But the real shock is the Third Movement. This movement makes no quarter for the players' technique at all, and requires the three 'celli, and one double bass to play all the notes that the violins play at different times - at their different octaves of course.
The fact that the movement kicks of in the high strings and the 'celli, and bass only enter on the third beat of the second bar is no excuse for saying what they play need be less clear than the violins' parts as it is already in imitation, already stated, as the second half launches with a significantly altered variant of the original motif in the 'celli, and bass, later imitated by the upper strings. Well normally it does, but what Pinnock does amounts to Philistine butchery of Bach's clearly written intentions!
Immediately it is obvious that the basic tempo is probably much too fast to allow the bass line to be articulated, and I wondered how on earth it would be! It isn't, because it isn't even played. The 'celli play what is written, and it is curiously unclear, but worst of all Pinnock has rewritten the bass-line so what the bass does play, is audible but completely transformed!
He allows the bass to play the first note in every group of three, in the groups of twelve in each bar, so we get a bass note every on each beat of the bar, and not the runs that Bach wrote. Elsewhere in the music Bach uses exactly this way of writing in the bass [with 'celli playing the same line an octave above] as a contrast to the beautiful swaying bass-line that occurs when twelve notes per bar are written and played. He wrote this contrast into the very music, which Pinnock seems to find fit to sacrifice this aspect on the alter of his own conception of it.
Tempi are a matter of taste. Rewriting the text is a matter for serious objection, especially when the choice of a more reasonable tempo would have allowed for the music to be played as written. One might almost say, to be played authentically. But yet this performance claims to be informed by "authentic" HIP practice.
I wish the recordings could be offered as Bach arranged Pinnock, and then this change would be flagged up!
This is not a satisfactory solution to the age-old problem of what speed to go in the music. HM Linde solves it with a wonderfully swung, and quite steady tempo, allowing every nuance out, and Reinhardt Goebel manages it by having such a phenomenal bass player who managed to play the part at a very, very fast speed! Though the result is hardly expressive as music making, it is a remarkable piece of playing from the technical standpoint. It is very closely recorded, so the detail is not lost, so in that case the recording became as much part of an extreme concept as the actual playing ...
Both cases, Pinnock and Goebel, reduce the possible contrasts as they limit the nuance a player can bring to his part, and Pinnock compounds this with a senseless adjustment to the texts. Why?
I really wondered whether to post this, but then I felt I really should! I generally hate negativity ...
George