Fw: Re: g minor sinfonia bwv797

[Jim Morrison <jim_morrison@sprynet.com>]

hi list,

what follows is something I thought I'd sent to the list, but actually went
only to Juozas.  Most of you people that post I'm sure know what I'm talking
about.

Jim


----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Morrison" <jim_morrison@sprynet.com>
To: "Juozas Rimas" <JuozasRimas@TAKAS.LT>
Sent: Monday, April 09, 2001 3:36 PM
Subject: Re: Re: g minor sinfonia bwv797


> Hi Juozas,
>
> thanks for setting me straight about the Gould's version of the 15th
> sinfonia.
>
> I love that fact that you'd be concerned with one single note.
>
> Really.
>
>  I like a close reading of a text or a musical performance and I hope that
one of our closest readers, Bradley, will make a comment or two about this
sinfonia and the note in question.
>
> I'll have to listen more closely to that note when I get the chance.
>
>
> You're right too about Rubsam not simply playing at a slow tempo all the
> time, as my recent post accidentally implied.  His tempo is constantly
> wavering, though often on the slow side and he does take many repeats,
and if I may, I'd like to  quote a well written passage or two  about Rubsum
that a list member
posted a few months ago , (hello again, list member,does this sound familiar
:)
>
>
> >In both his notes and his
> > playing, Rubsam is clearly out to demonstrate a fresh, rhetorical manner
> > of playing Bach on the piano.  This is based partly on his musical
> > sensibilities, and partly on research into baroque aesthetics.  The
> > recordings are a way to get that style into the ears of piano students
and
> > teachers, who might not have seriously entertained the notion of Bach on
> > the piano as being so free rhythmically (loose at the note level, within
> > absolutely clear bigger beats).
> >
> > snip
>
> >Rubsam treats the piano almost as if it were a
> > clavichord, and his attention to detail is remarkable...yet long lines
and
> > compositional structure are also there.
>
>
> The same person also wrote the following about  Rubsam's Naxos English
> Suites
>
> "...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."

Jim here.  You could probably argue that in the world of classical pianists
who play Bach that Gould and Rubsam are in their own ways extreme.  I'm a
bit amazed that Naxos would release as part of their Bach series such
unusual recordings and yet not try to sell them as being out of the norm.
People like me were no doubt shocked when they put on Rubsam and heard such
"agogic" playing, even if we didn't know the word for it.
>
>
>
> and concerning the chair Juozas wrote
>
> >What about the short sharp noises (the beginning of the 2th sinfonia,
> > for example) that sound like hitting the piano surface with a ball-point
> pen for
> > me? :)))
>
>
> I don't know about the others who have heard the disc, but to me that
sounds
> like a slowly  and loudly creaking chair, you know, that kind of creaking
> that progresses one sharp creak at a time, the kind of creaking that does
indeed resemble the sound of a pin tapping on wood.
>
> Jim
>
>