Re: GG: Letter to Krastins

[<Pellikka@aol.com>]

The answer to the "plateau" question is certainly as Richard Vallis wrote,
using the term "terraced dynamics." My own teacher studied Bach with Wanda
Landowski [obviously in the earlier part of the century] and she introduced me
to the term "terraced dynamics" as the term that Landowski, and presumably
most major Bach players, used at that time. The effect is during performing
Baroque music to move the dynamic level to just that, a new level or plateau
or terrace, without the "Romantic" use of dramatic or extended crescendos or
decrescendos or quickly alternating dynamics. 

The piano obviously has the advantage of being able to produce both terraced
or crescendoing or quickly alternating effects. To shift to different plateaus
smoothly and evenly and maintain such a plateau is not as easily done as it
may seem, at least not for us far-less-than-virtuosi performers, but it is a
wonderful concept.