Found a great Bach interpreter!

QuasiUnaFantasia Does anyone have experience with the Gulda WTC recordings from the early 1970's? They were unusual in that the microphones were placed extremely close to the strings (on a Bösendorfer Imperial). I have only recently heard about these recordings, but not yet listened to them.

I've been listening to Gulda's WTC for decades, since I was ten. Bk II was my first ever classical music recording purchase. I'm an unusual case in that, by the time I got to Gould, his performances were "wrong" to me, which is the reverse of how it is for most people with the WTC, I imagine. Gould is usually the standard.

As you say, the recordings are extremely dry and mic'ed right over the hammers. I personally think it really fits the music. It strips away everything but the counterpoint. Every other recording of WTC, regardless of the performance, sounds at least a little mushy and overly thick to me in comparison.

Gulda's performances are often idiosyncratic. He kind of has two speeds: slow, soft and deliberate, with lots of una corda; or rapid and hard. To be sure, he exhibits a bit more subtlety in between, but he's strongly pulled toward either of those two poles.

An example of an outlier performance is Fugue II, Bk I. Most performers take a medium tempo and use more legato phrasing. Gulda plays it slower, softer and much more detached, gradually ramping up the volume until he's practically pounding by the end.

His tempo is some of the most regular I've ever heard. He's a human computer, and that's not a slight, as I really enjoy the precision.

I've read his playing described as more vertical, emphasizing how the counterpoint lines up in any given beat, rather than horizontal, emphasizing individual lines. I feel this is an accurate assessment.

I'm in a weird place with Gulda. For me, it's familiar. Listening through either book is like comfort food. But I also know that his performance is at times really unusual. It's a case where, for me, what's weird is normal.

Argyris I think I've never listened to Gulda, or maybe I've done but not systematically so. Might give it a try just to familiarize myself with his Bach.

CyberGene He's an odd case when it comes to Bach. Apart from a few one-off live performances, some of which are available on YouTube, he basically recorded both books of WTC and then nothing else by the composer. No complete English Suites (I think he did the third one live) or French Suites, none of the Two-Part Inventions or Sinfonias, no Goldberg Variations, nothing.

It's like out of the blue running a marathon, turning in an impressive time, and then, despite this accomplishment, never doing it again.

I recently got a 10-disk set of his recitals in Stuttgart, where he played a lot of Beethoven sonata's, but also other stuff, including a good number of Bach works, and a "Prelude and fugue" of his own (think Bach writes jazz). His playing is technically magnificent, but his choices are at times really odd (including sometimes using an electrically amplified instrument of some sort). I can't really say that I bought his choices completely, but his renditions are certainly interesting.

CyberGene YouTubeBach - Prelude in Fm, BWV 857 [Played by Evgeni Kumanov]Bach - Well-Tempered Clavier, Prelude No.12 in F minor.Played on a Yamaha N1X controlling Garritan CFX virtual piano.This is an amateur recording. I'm a self...

That's wonderful!

I love Richter's recording -especially Book 1. He played a Bösendorfer.

https://youtu.be/3EnosoXeTWI?si=fUl6McgguedjIsjd

Johnstaf Richter’s WTC is indeed great 👍🏻

Surprisingly, Richter recorded the WTC more than once. There's a non-churchy, non-reverberant recording by him of Book 1 out there somewhere, probably available on YT.

I am probably way way late to this conversation, but wanted to drop a note with a link (just in case it wasn't already mentioned before). This is one of the excellent Goldberg Variations I have heard (probably second only to 1981 Gould recording).

Another recent version of Goldberg that I have enjoyed is by Yunchan Lim at Carnegie Hall. Quite different than Gould or Koroliov but interesting in its own way. And an original idea for an Encore, I must say!

oshogg I initiated this discussion about Koroliov, and since then, I haven’t stopped listening to his records, including WTC, Goldberg, French Suites, and The Art of Fugue. He’s undoubtedly become my top choice for Bach. Thanks for the Goldberg link and for Yunchan Lim as well.

Has anyone listened to the "Open Goldberg Variations", recorded by Kimiko Ishizaka? To my knowledge she is the only top level weightlifter to ever record the set.

https://opengoldbergvariations.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimiko_Douglass-Ishizaka#/media/File:Kimiko_deadlift_at_the_2005_German_Championships_in_Powerlifting.jpg

QuasiUnaFantasia Open Goldberg is a really cool project and I like the recording quite a bit. I have a friend that went the other direction, he began as a professional musician and later in life became national champ in weightlifting.

johanibraaten he began as a professional musician and later in life became national champ in weightlifting.

I guess the way to go about it is starting early: as a little child with a toy piano you start every practice session by lifting your piano up over your head, and put it softly down again. Now repeat this every time you practice for the rest of your life, and you'll be the strongest person on Earth before hitting adulthood. 😉

QuasiUnaFantasia

I happen to like Kimiko’s Bach, too…..

I’ll probably listen to Yunchan’s Goldbergs at some point, but considering his bang-me-hard, romantic, overly-expressive background I’m not sure if I’ll like it.

Lang’s Goldbergs are simply too fast and superficial; it’s as if he’s trying to summon Glenn, but he completely misses the point: whilst Glenn could play them Goldbergs “fast,” he could also maintain a level of clarity that was just uncanny, and his timing/phrasing was also unique; as if Art Tatum suddenly became a Bach interpreter….IMHO!

This is one of the greatest performances I've ever heard of anything by anyone.

QuasiUnaFantasia I guess the way to go about it is starting early: as a little child with a toy piano you start every practice session by lifting your piano up over your head, and put it softly down again. Now repeat this every time you practice for the rest of your life, and you'll be the strongest person on Earth before hitting adulthood. 😉

Do we have an award for best post ever?

Btw, and along the same topic, I remember a YT channel by a Korean lady that was a competing weightlifter and an accomplished pianist, and the YT nick was "PianoLifter"…

Johnstaf Thanks for sharing!

QuasiUnaFantasia guess the way to go about it is starting early: as a little child with a toy piano you start every practice session by lifting your piano up over your head, and put it softly down again. Now repeat this every time you practice for the rest of your life, and you'll be the strongest person on Earth before hitting adulthood. 😉

This is the same idea some people have about increasing the metronome tempo slightly every day to become a virtuoso. It leaves out the fact that a piece becomes incrementally more difficult every day if it's beyond the pianist's level of technical development.

Johnstaf the greatest performances I've ever heard of anything by anyone.

That's the same feeling I got when I heard Sokolov performed Brahms concerto no.1 back in 1996. I still feel the same about that concert.

QuasiUnaFantasia I guess the way to go about it is starting early: as a little child with a toy piano you start every practice session by lifting your piano up over your head, and put it softly down again. Now repeat this every time you practice for the rest of your life, and you'll be the strongest person on Earth before hitting adulthood. 😉

Great idea indeed, it seems that pianists have an opportunity here that other musicians might be missing😊

As it relates to playing the piano, too much emphasis has been placed on strengthening “the fingers,” and this has in turn sent many pianists to the emergency room with fingers that have been pushed to their limits and beyond….

Evolution did not factor piano-playing into its selective process, so, whilst the opposable thumb emerged out of necessity in order to preserve the species, and further propel us onto bigger and greater things, it was meant mainly for “gripping” to/onto things, grasping & handling, but not for piano-playing. So you see, the emphasis should be on figuring out how these things called fingers can better adapt to a machine that is inherently out of context, and, in the process it could turn out that evolution will take this effort into account so as to develop hands/fingers that can be better equipped for the piano, and not mostly meant for gripping/holding onto things; in the meantime I advise you to concentrate on how to go about this lapse in evolution and try to better adapt your hands around this conundrum.

In a nutshell, the piano was forced upon us rather than something carefully selected for the preservation of the species, so don’t overly-exercise your fingers under the false notion that this will in turn make you a better pianist….in other words, use your brain in figuring out a workaround that involves very little in the way of “strengthening.”