Re: rubsam (SORRY)

[Bradley P Lehman <bpl@umich.edu>]

On Fri, 3 Nov 2000, Jim Morrison wrote:

> We've been talking about Rubsam on the Bach recordings list and I
> accidentaly sent
> a posting to you folks instead of to them.
>
> Hope someone out there found the Rubsam reading interesting.  :)

Incidentally, Rubsam also did a series of all the Buxtehude organ works on
Bellaphon (in the 1980's, I believe), and his playing there is also full
of agogic accents.  It works particularly well there, I think, because
Buxtehude is in that "Stylus Phantasticus" of the time where every moment
something new is happening in the music...that's just the way those pieces
are written, and a tradition that informed young JSB.

In the mid-1980's I heard Rubsam play several concerts (some on organ,
some were Bach on piano) and he was doing the agogic accents pretty
heavily then, too.

It's also instructive to compare his first recording of the English Suites
(on Bayer) with the Naxos remake...the earlier one is plainer, less
inflected in this manner.  That is, the Bayer set sounds more Gouldian in
its rhythmic profile, it being easy to predict when the notes will take
place (if not *how* they will take place) within a relatively firm and
forward-moving structure.

In the Naxos remake everything is much more unpredictable within the big
beats, which are still clear.  Each big beat is like a geode, and when you
crack it open there's all that chaotic but beautiful surface inside it,
still controlled overall but allowed to be quirky at the small levels of
detail.

Gould's playing also has that quality where quirky things happen inside
the big beats (mostly due to his articulation), but he does it all in a
style where the individual notes begin at *very* regular points in time.
Motoric rigidity within the beats, as opposed to Rubsam's flexibility.

Both ways can be convincing.


Bradley Lehman, Dayton VA
home: http://i.am/bpl  or  http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl
CD's: http://listen.to/bpl or http://www.mp3.com/bpl

"Music must cause fire to flare up from the spirit - and not only sparks
from the clavier...." - Alfred Cortot