A Treat from JS Bach
Posted by: George J on 13 July 2014
The Prelude and Fugue in E Falt Minor from Book One of the "48"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5S_MxBZVWM
On the harpsichord, which does reveal both the tragedy and defiance in the music, rather than the sweetness that comes with the piano-style renditions.
ATB from George
Massive import for my library:
The Brilliant Complete Bach Edition, at 155 CDs.
I am going to import more or less everything, keep the unrepresented music, and decide whether to delete the represented by quality.
Very exciting musical end for 2014 ...
ATB from George
If someone asked me who my favourite composers are I might mention Mahler, Debussy, Ravel, Nielsen, Britten, Reich, Glass, Beethoven, Mozart, Puccini first and add JS Bach eventually. But if I look at my record collection I have more recordings of Bach compositions than any other composer. Now that says something.
I love his keyboard music, I love the Solo cello pieces, especially the János Starker recordings on 180g vinyl. The cantatas are also wonderful. etc etc etc.
He was a true genius, a word used too often these days but a word that describes JS Bach perfectly
Really enjoyed reading through this thread guys.
One of the most serenely beautiful pieces from Bach:
The Actus Tragicus, or the Cantata No. 106,
God's Time Is The Best Time.
Written as a Funeral Cantata, it is quite early Bach...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONE0s528hl0
ATB from George
This youtube film is not to be missed.
Bach was a much more interesting and normal person than the austere imagine of him that held sway during the 19th, Century.
The 20th. C. saw a revisiting of the music, and by now we can spy a man of immense warmth as well as being one of the handful off the class called "genius" in music.
John Elliot Gardiner here presents a refreshingly modern view of the great foundation of modern Western Art-music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOO8IC8_VaY
ATB from George
very good documentary. Thx for posting.
Concerning the Brilliant Classic Bach Edition, I have now imported 153 of the 155 CD into iTunes, and the sole reject was the two discs containing the Brandenburg Concertos. I have the recordings of Adolf Busch, Mogens Woldike, Otto Klemperer, and best of all, Hans Martin Linde, so one not quite as good can safely be left alone.
The other questionable performances all concern the most popular music such as the violin and harpsichord concertos, which most people getting this will already have in splendid performances on record. The Double Violin concerto is by a good pair of Polish violinists who play most in the style of David and Igor Oistrahk, which certainly fine, and Lodz Chamber Orchestra is certainly the equal of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra for Oistrahk father and son, but Elisabeth Wallfish and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment are certainly an advance on them!
So there will be some pruning in the orchestra parts of this, but the keyboard parts, and the choral parts are masterful.
For example just above a I posted a link to the estimable Gustav Leonhardt's recording of the Actus Tragicus, and yet the performance in this edition, by the same group who perform all the Sacred Cantatas is much finer in my view.
Wachet Auf is glorious, and Herz und Mund und ... is simply wonderful. So much to investigate.
My iTunes library is now nearly 500 Gig, and so my one TB MAC is imminent need of upgrading, and my back-up disc [Time Machine] will need to be renewed as there is not space for the new things. More than one third of the music [in my itunes] is by JS Bach now, and I don't expect that balance to shift radically for years.
Seagate 2 TB now needed for a safe back-up ...
I have a long time's worth of musical discovery to make, as well as reacquainting myself with small pieces from Annna Magdalene's Notebook and so on, and my goodness how could one man write so much that is so amazing? All in a mere sixty-five year lifespan.
ATB from George
The first piece of Bach I played on the piano but here payed by a master of the guitar. Segovia
BWV 999. A minute of pure genius:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmTnLcOYEGE
And here played on the piano as I worked it up but without the final flourish on the cadence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OmyD-h11G4
I now have Jalob Lindberg playing it on the Lute [but much slower], Segovia on the guitar [in a DG commercial recording, slightly less virtuosic] and
Pieter-Jan Belder
playing it on the harpsichord in a humane way that avoids speeding. not on youtube by now ...
Sometimes record collection is about reviewing ones own ideas on music.
ATB from George
Bump, as it concerns the other current Bach thread, here being many good examples of the conrast between the piano and harpsichord ...
ATB from George