Bach's hardest piano works. List them!

[C.B.]

Pizza's reference to the Liszt transcriptions of the Beethoven symphonies cites a notable example that that's been done, too - and brilliantly. Have you heard Cyprien Katsaris play any of these? Try it!

Yes, I have, and I'd rather hear the originals.

Leaving aside for the moment the Couperins and Rameaus, of course, the reason so much of this sort has been done with Bach is the incredible adaptability of his music. I remember the Sigurd Rasher Saxophone Quartet play some Bach arrangements years ago - don't ask me of what!-but what came through was the unmistakable characteristic of Bach's music.

And that's what's behind the plethora of Bach-Busonis and Bach-Stokowskis. These are all incredible tributes to the genius of Bach - just as Bach honored his contemporarites by transcribing their works liberally.

The obvious flaw in your comparison is that Bach wrote at the same time and in the same language as his contemporaries, hence the transcriptions are very close in spirit to the originals. Stokie's transcriptions are far removed in time and spirit from the originals--it seems to me that what comes through mostly is Stokie's ego, and very little of Bach. But hey, didn't you get up on your soapbox a while back about 'reading works in the original language', and all that?

If our contemporary purists decide to have none of that, that's their privilege - and, perhaps, their loss. As for myself, I'll consider myself free to enjoy - and perhaps be inspired by Bach's great works on the harpsichord, by the Goldberg Variations in such varying hands on the piano as Angela Hewitt or Glenn Gould - to mention just two - or to pay attention to what inspiration an artist yet to show up finds in the master's man's genius.

Naturally, if people want to listen to piano transcriptions of the Goldbergs, I'm not going to stop them. I suppose I should be grateful that people are listening to Bach in the first place, rather than rap or some other sub-human form of music. But the whole piano/harpsichord debate makes me wonder if fans of the piano really know what they're missing, if they've even heard the subtleties that are built into the score that can only be realized on two manuals. You'll never hear them, you know, if all you listen to is the piano version.

Hell, if you piano guys were really enterprising, you'd commission Steinway or Boesendorfer to build a true two-manual grand, with two complete set of strings and different striking points for the two mechanisms (for a contrasting timbre between the manuals). Now that would worth hearing!

[pizza]

But the whole piano/harpsichord debate makes me wonder if fans of the piano really know what they're missing, if they've even heard the subtleties that are built into the score that can only be realized on two manuals. You'll never hear them, you know, if all you listen to is the piano version.

Hell, if you piano guys were really enterprising, you'd commission Steinway or Boesendorfer to build a true two-manual grand, with two complete set of strings and different striking points for the two mechanisms (for a contrasting timbre between the manuals). Now that would worth hearing!

I've heard the Goldbergs on both the piano and the harpsichord and prefer the piano. If I want to hear a prepared piano, I'll listen to Conlon Nancarrow, Henry Cowell or John Cage. To me a harpsichord is comparable to an internal combustion engine missing on several cylinders and badly in need of a tuneup. You are welcome to it.

I don't view the discussion as a debate. Does one debate whether an end cut of prime rib tastes better than a center cut? You order what you prefer.

[dzalman]

To me a harpsichord is comparable to an internal combustion engine missing on several cylinders and badly in need of a tuneup.

My guess is that you've never heard a well-built modern or well-restored period harpsichord played live in an appropriate acoustic.

Just a guess, as I've said. If I were a betting man, I'd bet against it -- giving odds.

[premont]

BTW, there have been piano transcriptions of Beethoven symphonies which also produce few whimpers. If I recall correctly, Liszt transcribed all nine.

If I recall correctly, Liszt arranged LvB´s nine symphonies to extend the knowledge of the symphonies in an age without CDs, and not in order to replace the originals with something he thought was better. And his arrangements are indeed marvellous (yes listen to Karsaris or Scherbakov in these works), but they can´t replace the originals for that reason.
As to the Goldbergs, in this forum this issue is discussed as being a question of preferring the pianoarrangement to the original.

I shall add, that I am not a piano-hater, - not at all. But I think, the piano and the harpsichord both have their own particular repertoires, and correspondingly I should not play Debussy on a harpsichord, and think this was better than playing him on piano.
By the way, long time before I ever had heard of harpsichords, my pianoteacher "ordered" me to play Bach on the piano, and I always experienced a conflict between Bachs music and the piano as medium. I didn´t feel in the same way with romantic music or more modern music and the piano. Perhaps a childs natural sense of style.

[Werner]

A couple of answers, with your induklgence.

Pizza: I don't quite see the piano/harpsichord omparison as you do, but I see no reason why shou shouldn't be entitled to be just as opinionated as the rest of us!

C.B.: I recall no post of mine regarding an "original language" spoabox. Are you possibly thinking of someone else?

You and I can probably argue about the spirit of Stokie's transcriptions until the cows come hime, and not agree. As Piza put it so eloquently: that's life.

It may intrerest you to know that as a teenager - in the Stone Age! - I studied piano with a harpsichordist, who had studied with Landowska and owned a Pleyel that I was occasionally allowed to try. That's what originally stimulated my love for the harpsichord - although some today would consider that a skewed view of it.

A couple of years later while going to school in England, I met a musician who owned a piano that actually had two manuals. So you see, that too has been done - but it evidently went nowhere.

Premont: I don't suppose that Liszt or anybody else conceived his piano transcriptions of the Beethoven symphonies as a replacement for the original. But under the right circumstances it anebled people - I'll also refer to the days without CDs! - to hear this music on one piano without havving a full orchestra around.

[pizza]

BTW, there have been piano transcriptions of Beethoven symphonies which also produce few whimpers. If I recall correctly, Liszt transcribed all nine.

If I recall correctly, Liszt arranged LvB´s nine symphonies to extend the knowledge of the symphonies in an age without CDs, and not in order to replace the originals with something he thought was better. And his arrangements are indeed marvellous (yes listen to Karsaris or Scherbakov in these works), but they can´t replace the originals for that reason.
As to the Goldbergs, in this forum this issue is discussed as being a question of preferring the pianoarrangement to the original.

What you refer to as a "piano arrangement" of the Goldbergs is really not an "arrangement" nor is it a transcription. The notes are struck on a modern keyboard instrument in precisely the same sequence as they were originally written.

Of course Liszt didn't intend to replace the original Beethoven symphonies with his piano transcriptions and nobody ever implied or claimed that he did. Mention of his transcriptions was merely a rejoinder to someone's exaggerated claim that the complaints of indignant music lovers everywhere would rise to the stratosphere if such an event occurred.

[C.B.]

C.B.: I recall no post of mine regarding an "original language" spoabox. Are you possibly thinking of someone else?

My mistake--it was Karl Henning.

[C.B.]

[quote="pizza"]What you refer to as a "piano arrangement" of the Goldbergs is really not an "arrangement" nor is it a transcription. The notes are struck on a modern keyboard instrument in precisely the same sequence as they were originally written.[quote]

Sorry, but you're dead wrong on that one. If you examine any of the a 2 claviere movements of the Goldbergs (I'd give you specifics, but I'm at work right now), you'd see that when the two hands cross--and they do frequently--they often play the same notes. Sometimes the same note or notes is/are sounded simultaneously in both hands, or in slightly different rhythms, sometimes one hand holds down a note while the other hand plays notes around it, etc., etc.

Because of the physical impossibility of re-striking a note while it is being held down, all of this has to be simulated on a single-manual instrument (i.e., the modern grand piano), resulting in an approximation, a bowdlerization. Call it a transcription, or arrangement, or whatever you like, what comes out on a modern grand piano is not what Bach originally wrote--never has been, never will be.

[pizza]

Because of the physical impossibility of re-striking a note while it is being held down, all of this has to be simulated on a single-manual instrument (i.e., the modern grand piano) .........

A modern piano's sostenuto pedal can be employed to hold a note while it is struck again.

[C.B.]

Because of the physical impossibility of re-striking a note while it is being held down, all of this has to be simulated on a single-manual instrument (i.e., the modern grand piano) .........

A modern piano's sostenuto pedal can be employed to hold a note while it is struck again.

True, but while the sostenuto pedal is depressed, the damper(s) for the notes is question is/are raised, and re-striking the note makes for a wash of undamped sound, hardly the same effect as when the note is struck and released without the pedal.

[markhedm]

I mentioned in a previous post an article giving a recommended order of difficulty for the Goldberg Variation. I found the article online. The chart of order of difficulty is found on page 3, with suggested tempi. The author considered the fermatas as indications of groupings of variations. Mark H.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/ ... _n13629140
Bach's Goldberg Variations demystified
American Music Teacher, April-May, 2005 by Cory Hall

[BuKiNisT]

I personally find the harpsichord vs piano argument rather pointless...having heard and enjoyed both - they're just different. We just have to remember that composer's vision doesn't come through single notes or even phrases. Is is the higher order structures that channel it - and for that matter it is much more important who is playing, and not what instrument...

I, for example, adore Bach's Keyboard and Orchestra Concertos played by Sviatoslav Richter or Maria Yudina - and while both played them on a piano, recordings of both are marvelous in their own right - while very different, yet i can't say that this or that isn't what Bach intended or a mere shadow of his music...

And i doubt that Ashkenazi for example would have achieved a similar scale effect even if he played those concertos on a well built and perfectly appropriate from the period point of view harpsichord...

[jbuck919]

This post jumped up upon my return after a lengthy vacation in the USA, where I could only post sporadically. I apologized for missing five pages of stuff here.

But I do not apologize for getting to the heart of the question without respect to what others may have posted. The Goldberg Variations are beyond intelligent doubt the most difficult keyboard work of Bach. On the organ, the trio sonatas know no equal. I do not understand why this is even a question or how it produced a serious thread.

[dzalman]

This post jumped up upon my return after a lengthy vacation in the USA, where I could only post sporadically. I apologized for missing five pages of stuff here.

But I do not apologize for getting to the heart of the question without respect to what others may have posted. The Goldberg Variations are beyond intelligent doubt the most difficult keyboard work of Bach. [...] I do not understand why this is even a question or how it produced a serious thread.

Great minds think alike.