Transcripts
1. Introduction: Han Sebastian Bach was born
in 16 85 and was famous for a wealth of music from secular music to
sacred oratorios. And I wanted to put together a little course about how you might approach playing Bach's
music on the modern piano. I think a lot of piano players
are a little bit nervous about how you approach on
a very modern instrument, Bach having conceived a lot of his music for
the harpsichord, a totally different sound world. So, welcome to the beautiful St. Columbus's Church
in Knightsbridge, where I'm going to be performing the Goldberg variations
in the end of this year. And I'm going to
talk through some of the variations and look at the different
elements that make up a really good performance
on the modern piano.
2. Articulation: So I think one of
the key things for modern players is
how you articulate the notes as in how much space you put in between
them to deliver them. If you look at the Glen Gould
recordings in the 1950s, he was infamous for
making every single note really short and almost sort of pecking at the
keyboard a little bit. And you look at
those recordings, he sat on a little wooden
chair and he's kind of leaning over the
piano like this, and perhaps that might not
be your interpretation. But Glen Gould certainly had
a clarity in his playing, which I think is important. Consider how might
a Baroque cellist bow a particular phrase? If we take variation one, let's have a look
at this left hand. So they're going to have to cross strings as in
they're gonna have to move the bow a long way to make those leaps
all over the place. You can't possibly play
that phrase smoothly. You can't possibly
do it because you can't navigate the
bow that quickly. Therefore, suggests to
me that we're going to articulate it as
in we're going to put more space in
between the notes. And I find the general
rule when playing bark on a modern piano is when
the phrase leaps around, I think, right, how would
a baroque cellist do this? And it causes me, therefore, to put more space in. If I look at the
right hand, though, that's a little bit more
like a scale passage, so And because those notes
are so close together, it means that we can
play them a little bit more smoothly with
a bit more lines. So at points, you're
going to have two different articulations
in the left hand here, really heavily articulated in the right hand, quite smooth. I'll play you how
that might sound. Now, obviously, there
are no particular hard and fast rules here about articulation, but it's about how you
get the music over in the clearest possible
way and how a violinist or a cellist might approach
the music that generally informs the best use of articulation as you're playing
bach on a modern piano.
3. Dynamics : Was it Sir Thomas
Beacham that said, The harpsichord sounds like two cats copulating on a tin roof? I think
it might have been. And the thing about
the harpsichord is, it's very good to
listen to in the car, because the dynamics
never change. They're always consistent. But the thing about
the modern piano is that we can create a variety of different shades of dynamic from the very quietest
sounds to the very loudest. We can even employ the una
corda, the left pedal, which moves all the keys to one side and means we're
only striking one string, and we get a really
quiet, delicate sound. And Come on, I Bach
was alive today, would he have wanted
these shades of color? I'm convinced he would. Originally, the Goldbergs were supposedly written by Bach four. Harp cord is Goldberg to help the count at
the castle fall asleep. And surely, there's nothing
more soothing than a sort of gentle lullaby and then followed by something
totally different. So I think we've got to employ these different
shades of color. For instance, if
we take the Aria, we have a wonderful baseline. Again, the baseline
always informing us, but the baseline here So the same phrase three
times, but growing. We call that a sequence in music where we have
the same musical idea that sort of gets higher
or gets lower, a sequence. And that suggests to me in the music that we're going
to crescendo through it. So we start very gently at
the beginning of the line. We do a nice
crescendo through it. If a harpsichordist
was playing that, it would all be
sort of one volume, so they'd have to employ other techniques to make that work. The other thing to
consider is that bar lines don't necessarily show dynamic levels or
particular phrasing. For instance, the
bar line there, if I was to phrase
with the bar line, the music would sound like this. Very strange. If I get rid of
the bar lines and just phrase the shapes instead. Put a little bit of articulation
and a nice crescendo, then we're onto a winner there. So try not to be tied in
to the sort of, you know, formulaic structure, those particular
structures of bar lines, try to lift the
notes off the page. And the modern piano, with all its variety and shades of colors,
allows you to do that.
4. Rubato: One of the big questions
is about the use of rubato or literally from
the Italian robbed, where we take time from 1 bar, put it into another, as in we
pull the time around a bit. And there's a sort of
school from the 1960s, and they would I imagine them wear socks and
sandals and they were deep lantels and they took
their bark very seriously and everything must be
heavily articulated. And the thing is, today's
audiences, I think, have become a little bit
more sympathetic to, you know, the nuances
of the modern piano. And what I mean by that is
you listen to a really, really fine Baroque orchestra and their violins are taking
time all over the place. The thing is, as long
as you catch the time back up, then you're
absolutely fine. Let's take variation 13, for example. Here's
the start of it. If I play it with no
rubato, totally in tempo, Please don't say you like that, but if you do, that's fine. I won't hold it against you. My interpretation of
that will be to add a little bit of ribato
there, a bit of flavor. Yeah? A bit of seasoning
to your music. The thing about Ribato
is when you do it, it sounds a bit more like you're making it up improvisatory, and those skills were
so used to Baroque. You know, Baroque
performers were so used to having those
skills of improvisation. You look at the Dacapo Arias
that singers would do. They'd sing it very
plain the first time, and then they'd sort of
extemporize and make up their own version with loads of ornaments and trills
the second time. So please don't be
afraid of Ribato. It's not Chopin, though. It's not list, as
we've said before. It's not, you know, you can't absolutely sort
of recreate the tempo. As long as you've got a sort
of tactus a strong pulse, and within that,
take a bit of time and really enjoy yourself. And it goes the same
with ornamentation. In the Goldberg, particularly, Bach is quite prescriptive about where you do
the little ornaments, you know, the little trills and the little twiddles and things. And so, do it. But there are times, you know, where you can do little runs. For instance, in variation four, when you do the repeat, the first time you
play it like this. Yeah, the second time, you
could put a little run up. That sounds a bit more
cheeky, a bit more playful. Find those little moments
where you can just create more joy in the music and just enjoy the virtuosity,
especially of the piano. The thing is, if you do
that on the harpsichord, that old quote about the cats
on the roof comes to mind, because you get a
sudden, you know, sort of machine
gun esque figure. Might be a little bit too
much. On the piano, though, you can be a little bit
more delicate with it, and you can create a really,
really nice line there. So in terms of rubato, feel free, within the
constraints of the time. And the thing is the base part generally is the
most solid part. Keep the base part nice
and sort of rhythmic, and then everything else
around it can just have a bit more a bit more flavor and a bit more freedom above.
5. Sustain Pedal : One of the big questions that players ask is, should
I use the pedal? Am I allowed to use the pedal? Well, it's your performance, and ultimately,
it's your choice. And I do wonder whether Bach had access to a sustained pedal. I'm pretty sure he
would have used it to create more resonance, to create a sort of richer
texture in the music. If we look at the opening
of the fourth variation, this suggests to me
just a little dab of pedal at the start of each bar. Now, I'm not
suggesting that this is Chopin or
Schumann or foray or something like that
where you stick the pedal down and it just obliterates everything
and creates a big sort of mush of sound, no, but just a little
bit to sort of accentuate the start of each
bark and be really helpful. I think used in moderation,
the petals really urn. So here's with no pedal. Now, here's with a touch
of the right pedal, the sustained pedal, mainly
on the downbeat of each bar. To be honest, it's incredibly subtle change at that moment, but I'm sure that it just allows the harmony to
linger on a little more and creates a moment of reflection almost
for the audience there. If you rush through it in a
very dry way with no pedal, it's just kind of each of
the new bars just becomes a little bit too articulated and a little bit overdone there. The other thing to say is the
unacorda, the left pedal, can be useful in really, really quiet moments to affect, you know, sort of
more gentle sound. Perhaps, in this variation, if you want to do an echo
the second time around. I think use all of the devices that we have accessible to us, but don't forget that
Bach didn't have them, so we have to use them just
with a little pinch of salt. But do employ them when it is possible and when it is
necessary in the music. Again, if you have a
passage that's full of lots of semiquaves for
instance, variation five. You know, lots of semiquavers
in the right hand there it's incredibly frantic. That's not necessarily a
good place to be putting the sustained pedal down
heavily or the unacorda. But definitely worth considering building them into
your playing of Bach.
6. From harpsichord to piano: Specifically, when you move the music from the harpsichord, as Bark intended
it onto the piano, got a couple of things
to think about. Most harpsichords allow you to add sort of brighter
sounding stops called a four foot
and a two foot to make the upper resonances
just a little bit bright. On the piano, obviously, we're
limited to what we have, which means that as you get higher up the
range of the keyboard, you need to be making
it just a little bit brighter if that's
the intended effect. If we take variation 16, for example, if you start in just play it in the same way as the
previous movements, we get quite a dull sound. Yeah. Rather, if
to the right hand, I add just that bit
of upper resonance. Yeah, just a little bit brighter creates a slightly
more metallic tone, and that's quite
useful to imitate what the harpsichord is capable of doing those sort
of brighter things. The other thing
when you're taking harp schord music and
translating it onto the piano, harp chord chords die
away really quickly. So if you were to put a
chord down altogether, the sound would disappear
really quickly. Inside the harps chord,
you've got lots of little plectra
plucking the strings, and that plucking sort of
disappears really quickly. On the piano, when
we press a key, the hammer hits the
string and then it sort of rebounds or rebounds away from the string
so that the sound keeps ringing as long as
you keep the key down. And I suggest that if you
have chords, for instance, the starter variate from 16, you actually slightly
opetiate them like this. I think it's just
nice to sort of hark back to how a harps chords
would have started that. I doubt harpschords
would ever go all four notes down
at the same time because the sound would simply
just die away so quickly. So a little bit of pegiation and a little bit
brighter at the top. And then you're
into that sort of sound world of the sort of
brighter, more metallic. And this variation
actually goes on into a little three times
section at the end. I'll just play you a
little extended section of that because it's a nice
way to finish this deal, so
7. Conclusion: Thanks so much for spending some time with me and the music of JS Bach and his
Goldberg variations. Now, I think there's a lot of fear about performing
the music of Bach, a feeling that, oh, somehow
it's untouchable and, you know, we must hold him
in the highest to regard. And obviously, a wonderful composer from a
family of musicians. But what I would say is don't be afraid of giving it a go.
This is your performance. You have something to offer
with your interpretation. Yes, by all means,
listen to recordings and check out other
interpretations. I mean, the most
famous one, obviously, being Glen Gould's
various recordings. He was famous for
playing bach in a particularly clear
articulated way with real super precision. And yeah, we should
achieve precision, but definitely not at the
expense of musicality. So use the capability
of the piano, the sustained pedal,
it's versatile tone. The fact the modern
piano has a metal frame and holds its tone
much more clearly. I mean, the topic we haven't
really covered today, and that will be
for another time is all about temperament and how the piano is
tuned totally equally. Every semitone is the same. Don't forget, though, how
Hartzichoris would have played. They'd never put
a chord down Ah, smack bang all the
notes together. They'd have probably
spread so that the chord would carry on
that little bit longer, and it would have more
sustaining capability. The most important person to
thank is Mr. Paul Dempsey, who's helped me as
backroom technician, to put together this
course for you. And I really appreciate you joining us and listening
through the course, and I wish you all
the best of luck in the playing of Bach on
the piano. Thank you.
Ben Lewis-Smith, Musician
