Re: GG: [Bach-List]

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

On Tue, 21 Apr 1998, Richard Vallis wrote:

> GG doesn't just add a continuo part in this concerto.  He actually adds thematic
> material in the left hand while the right hand is playing scalar patterns.  Listen
> particularly near the end of the movement, before the cadenza.  

True, but there's nothing to say one can't add thematic material as part
of playing continuo, and it's not a novel thing for GG to have done.  It
goes back at least as far as early 17th-century violin works from the area
now known as Italy; contrapuntal entries of upper voices (enough to get
one started) are notated in the bass part.  There are also contrapuntal
entries notated in the figures in Bach's G-major violin sonata with
continuo (the one whose bass line is shared with another Bach piece, with
different melody parts and figures).  And Pasquini's sonatas for dueling
keyboards, each playing continuo against the other, have plenty of
right-hand sketchy bits as thematic material squeezed into each player's
single line. 

As Bazzana points out, GG amended some of the Mozart sonatas, too, adding
thematic content. 

> If  I'm not mistaken,
> by the way, I believe the cadenza in the Columbia recording is by Beethoven.

According to the Beethoven work list at
http://magic.hofstra.edu:7003/immortal/works.html, which includes all
those little "wuh-oh" pieces, the only Mozart concerto he did cadenzas to
was K.466, the d minor.  Whoever wrote the one GG used in the c minor, I
still think it's on the weird side, especially when it gets up to the high
notes that weren't on Mozart's pianos.  Fun but strange.  Always makes me
laugh at its whimsy, in this otherwise basically serious concerto.  Not as
strange as the Schnittke cadenza that Kremer recorded in the Beethoven
violin concerto.  Not as strange as GG's cadenzas to the Beethoven first
piano concerto.  Not even 1/10th as strange as GG's deconstructive reading
of the Bach viola da gamba sonatas with Leonard Rose. 

Bradley Lehman ~ Harrisonburg VA, USA ~ 38.45716N+78.94565W
bpl@umich.edu ~ http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/