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Renowned teacher and pianist Graham Fitch gave a masterclass to the Brighton EPTA group on the keyboard music of J S Bach. The class took place at the home of one of the members and proved both instructive and convivial.

Bach’s output for the keyboard is vast and offers the pianist many challenges, both technical and artistic. The class hardly the scratched the surface of Bach’s oeuvre with the performance of four pieces, but these were all excellent examples of Bach’s keyboard writing and provided much useful food for thought for performers and observers.

These notes are by no means comprehensive, merely a record of what I perceived to be the salient points which emerged through the study of two Preludes & Fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier, a Toccata and the Prelude from the First Partita.

Prelude & Fugue No. 1 in C major (WTC Book 1)

Prelude

  • Use the harmonic structure of the music to shape phrases and to give emotional depth/lightness. Practising the RH figures as block chords can help this.
  • Be aware that the expressive range of this Prelude comes from within the music itself through, for example, the use of major or minor harmonies, dissonance and suspensions.
  • Create a sense of ‘breathing’ in the music, an ebb and flow within phrases.
  • Use of techniques such as over-holding and finger pedal can increase sonority and richness of sound without additional use of sustain pedal.
  • Feel fully connected to the bottom of the keys when playing the RH semiquavers to create a rich, authoritative sound.

Fugue

  • Be aware that the P&F were intended to be performed together. Anticipate the Fugue from the closing cadence of the Prelude and create a connection between to the two works.
  • Highlight the way the music rises through the register to create a sense of climax and dying back.
  • This fugue has a distinctly ‘processional’ flavour – feel the sense of the music ‘arriving’ at cadences, in particular in the final quarter, and maintain a sense of energy, before a quieter closing cadence.

The study of this Prelude & Fugue led to some general discussion about playing Bach expressively, with Graham suggesting that one should not shy way from playing Bach’s music with expression. Too many of us feel we should play in a more restrained way, and yet Bach writes much scope for expression into his music, through the use of devices described above.

Toccata in E minor BWV 914

The Toccata is related to the Fantasy or Fantasia, and contains improvisatory sections as well as the strict toccata elements (usually rapid passagework).

Opening section

  • Create a sense of freedom and improvisation in the opening measures
  • Walking bass – highlight the sounds with different types of attack
  • Aim for consistency of articulation

Toccata section

  • Keep the semiquavers vibrant and mimic bowed strings in the articulation
  • Create a sense of energy which runs through the entire section
  • As in the P&F, use the harmonic changes to shape the phrases and create a rise and fall in the music

Prelude from Partita No. 1 in B flat

  • Ornaments should be on the beat, and it’s important to maintain a sense of the underlying rhythm. Practise without ornaments
  • Be aware of the rising intervals in the opening measures – 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, octave – and use these to shape the phrase and create a climax
  • Overhold the semiquavers for greater cantabile sound
  • F major section – allow the secondary vocal lines to sing out and create filigree in LH.
  • Create a sense of grandeur in the G minor section and at the end.
  • Again, use the harmonies to inform phrasing and to add expression.

Prelude & Fugue in F minor BWV 857 (WTC Book 1)

Prelude

  • Create a sense of the opening crotchets supporting the upper parts
  • Lighten the semiquavers in the LH lower register so that the texture doesn’t become too thick.

Fugue

One of the most dramatic fugues – spiritual and tragic. Highlight each entry and exploit the grandeur of this piece, particularly the beautiful F major closing cadence.

 

Graham’s blog

http://practisingthepiano.com/

http://www.grahamfitch.com/

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Alexandre Tharaud (image credit: Marco Borggreve)

Despite the bad weather, the gales, and the cancelled trains, I managed to get into central London yesterday (thanks to the District Line which was fully operational from Richmond) to view the ‘Honoré Daumier: Visions of Paris’ exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts (review to follow), and to hear French pianist Alexandre Tharaud in a lunchtime concert of music by Bach, Schubert and Chopin. I had been much looking forward to this particular Wigmore lunchtime recital because the programme was all music I know well and love.

There is perhaps a lesson in here, for the concert was a disappointment, and it made me wonder whether I should, in future, select concerts which do not feature music I know well……

Read my full review here

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In the second part of our podcast, pianist and conductor Alisdair Kitchen and I talk more generally, covering aspects such as teachers, inspirations and influences, forthcoming projects – and baking.

Listen to the first part of the podcast here

Download the complete Goldberg Variations, performed, recorded and produced by Alisdair Kitchen here

Download Alisdair’s complete #twittergoldbergs commentary here

www.alisdairkitchen.com

Follow Alisdair on Twitter @alisdairkitchen

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Photo credit: Marco Borggreve
Photo credit: Marco Borggreve

It would be foolish of me to attempt to review harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani’s magical Wigmore Hall recital in detail, as I have neither the knowledge of the mechanics of the instrument nor familiarity with the repertoire to do justice his performance. I “dabbled” with the harpsichord while at school, playing continuo in a Baroque group, and now I occasionally play a friend’s instrument, more to attempt to understand some of Bach’s writing in pieces I am learning on the piano, than any serious commitment to the instrument. For years, I felt it was best left to early music and Baroque specialists.

I grew up listening to my parents’ LPs of Glenn Gould’s recordings of the Goldberg Variations, and believed these were the benchmark against which all other interpretations of this mighty work should be set. However, in 2011, after reading about the young Iranian harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani on Norman Lebrecht’s blog, I decided to take the plunge and review a harpsichord recital. In July 2011, at London’s elegant Cadogan Hall, a double debut took place: Mahan’s Proms debut and the first time ever a solo harpsichord recital was presented at the Proms. I called my review “Spellbound by Bach” because for the full hour of the concert that is the state in which Mahan’s playing put us. Credited with bringing the harpsichord “out of the closet”, Mahan’s approach captivated and enthralled. He made the instrument – and the music – appear modern, newly-wrought.

So, when I and the friend who owns the harpsichord rocked up at the Wigmore on Friday night I knew we were in for an exceptional evening of music.

The pieces by Byrd drew inspiration from dances and songs, some toe-tapping and rousing, others stately and elegant, and religious texts, written by a composer living in a country poised on the cusp of change, as England sloughed off the Middle Ages and stepped confidently into the Renaissance. Some of the works were delicate, fleeting, poignant, others proud and courtly. All were beautifully presented, Mahan highlighting the subtleties of sound and touch possible on the instrument. During a pause in the performance, Mahan talked engagingly about Byrd’s importance in the canon of English music, and the forward-pull of his compositional vision. I was struck, not for the first time on hearing Mahan, at the range of tone, colours and moods he was able to achieve with the instrument.

After the interval, a selection works by Bach from the ‘Musical Offering’, a collection of canons and fugues and musical “riddles” which Bach composed in response to a challenge from Frederick the Great (and to whom they are dedicated). A three-part fugue and a six-part fugure (Ricercars) and a “Canon in tones” showed Bach at his most esoteric, teasing and “modern”, which set the scene nicely for, what was, for me, the highlight of the evening – the complete harpsichord music of Gyorgi Ligeti, which recalls Renaissance and Baroque models (the Passacaglia and Chaconne).

Again, Mahan introduced the works, explaining that in the Soviet Eastern Bloc, the harpsichord and early music were considered dangerously reactionary and composers and musicians were not permitted to write for or play the harpsichord. (Interestingly, a number of key modern composers and champions of the harpsichord are from former Eastern Bloc countries.) Mahan then explained that the second harpsichord on the stage was a rather special instrument, a modern harpsichord with nine pedals, a kind of “prepared piano” of the harpsichord world, capable of some extraordinary, other-worldly, sounds – amply demonstrated by Mahan in his performance of the works by Ligeti.

The Passacaglia Ungherese was redolent of the falling figures and ground basses of the music of Bach and his contemporaries; by contrast, Continuum was a fleeting sonic flurry, its strange sound-world recalling an alarm, breaking glass, an angry mosquito. (Ligeti used the harpsichord for this piece because the rapid speed would be almost impossible to achieve on the heavier action of piano.) To close, Mahan played Ligeti’s Hungarian Rock, a tour de force of rhythm and sonic textures suggesting the plucked sound of a modern guitar. The basis of the work is a Chaconne, a set of variations over a pounding, repeating chord pattern (the basis for much jazz and rock music). It was an energetic – and energising – close to a stunning and unusual programme.

For an encore, a short work by Purcell: simple, elegant, perfect. Afterwards, we queued up the stairs to the green room of the Wigmore to congratulate Mahan on a truly miraculous evening of music making.

Mahan argues the case for a modern appreciation of the harpischord and its repertoire far better than I can. Read his guest blog for Gramophone here

My Meet the Artist interview with Mahan Esfahani (from 2012)

Review of Mahan Esfahani’s Prom’s debut