-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Geoffrey Webber, Bach’s keyboard concertos on harpsichord and piano, Early Music, Volume 49, Issue 4, November 2021, Pages 627–629, https://doi.org/10.1093/em/caab077
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
In his captivating film The Creative Performer (1960), sponsored by the Ford Motor Company and now available on YouTube, Leonard Bernstein discusses the problem of interpretation in Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto no.1 in D minor, bwv1052, performed in concert by the New York Philharmonic with Glenn Gould at the piano. Bernstein helpfully gives illustrations of extremes of performance style: the opening orchestral ritornello and then a passage from a cadenza-like section for the keyboard are both performed in two highly contrasted manners, the expectation being that the actual performance will lie somewhere between the two extremes. The most memorable excerpt is perhaps when he plays the notes on the piano exactly as written in strict tempo and with unchanging dynamics, describing it as ‘unutterably dull’. This is not a phrase I would wish to use in relation to any of the performances in this crop of recent recordings of Bach’s keyboard concertos, but Bernstein’s educational film helps remind us of the wide variety and range of possibilities in interpretation that performers face when playing Bach, whether with a modern orchestra and grand piano or a small Baroque ensemble and harpsichord.
