The Force of J.S. Bach

We have a big concert (and two big concerti) tomorrow night! It’s the third annual “Bach by Candlelight.” Click here to purchase tickets. 

PHOTO: A Go-Pro photo of Bach practicing, Concerto in d minor, BWV 1052. Come on Saturday to hear it! 

 

Here is a video link to something I made. Click on this ...  See if you get the joke - you have to watch until the end of the video - 

And here is a quote by Glenn Gould that perfectly sums up why I / we do this concert every year, and my feelings on Bach’s music in particular …. 

 

"I think that if I were required to spend the rest of my life on a desert island, and to listen to or play the music of any one composer during all that time, that composer would almost certainly be Bach. 

"I really can’t think of any other music which is so all-encompassing, which moves me so deeply and so consistently, and which, to use a rather imprecise word, is valuable beyond all of its skill and brilliance for something more meaningful than that — its humanity."

Bird's-Eye Bach

I’ve been enjoying the downtime and practicing Bach a lot. And I’m taking a page from this artist and have been filming my practicing. I’ve been noticing two things, which are small technicall break-throughs for me ...

1. I have to have contact with key before I release it downward. For years, I’ve been probably using a lot of (mini) "blind-landings” from fingertip to key. Something in my harpsichord practice yesterday really “klicked.” 

2. The videos have also identified small micro-bursts of energy that don’t go with the music. These are the “I don’t believe yous” that I am trying to help my students identify in themselves. I’m a firm believer in “teachers should not ask something of others that they cannot do themselves.” 

PHOTO: A bird's-eye view of Bach practicing. 

I’m grateful for this breathing time, and this time to be my own teacher.

Go(ing) Pro

 

I was inspired recently by Opera Southwest's use of the GoPro camera during rehearsals ... 

 

And my father bought a GoPro in order to record his drone helicopter flights. It’s a fun idea, actually. Another favorite TV show of late ("The Curse of Oak Island") featured these little cameras as some professional divers dove hundreds of feet in order to find buried treasure. 

I have been playing with this camera since I purchased it a few weeks ago. My favorite features are the “remote activation” (meaning you can take a still shot or a start-stop a video from an iPhone) and the fact that it is VERY small. Very practical for traveling and self-archiving ...

Today, it was a fairly open Saturday. I am hard at work on a project - re-orchestrating Mozart’s MAGIC FLUTE (more about that later) and of course, my regular practicing and score study.

Today I blissfully toggled between both.

On the “practice docket” this week is a work for violin and piano of Olivier Messiaen. Some of it is devilishly fast. The final variation is life-affirming, slow, regal, and seems to stop time. Being a big fan of his “Quartet for the End of Time,” and especially having played the cello movement many times in rehearsal, I am awed by the similarities of this final variation to that movement of the Quartet. Messiaen also seems to evoke a pipe organ, as he asks for HUGE reaches from the pianist (in reality: you have to get the bass octaves before the beat and catch them in the pedal) in order to play the chords where they need to fall.

Here is a video of the Messiaen ... 

My studio is so wonderfully nurturing these days - the light coming through the windows is, in a word, time-stopping. This semester feels like is has gotten almost to the point of a runaway train (Not necessarily bad. Just very fast). When I can take moments - to savor Messiaen’s slow-moving transcendent music, to “exist” in the light coming through my window - it is the best thing which I can do. 

 

 

Here's to slowing down a little, savoring the fall. Harmonies can change in an instant.

Here's to savoring the movement of time - vertically and horizontally.

 

 

Brahms, the mysterious

My faculty recital is coming up this coming Sunday. The program is:

Britten, Canticle III 

Brahms, Sonata in f minor, Opus 120, no 1

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Journey, Lori Laitman

Vocalise-Étude, Olivier Messiaen

Spanisches Liederspiel, Opus 74, Robert Schumann

What has been interesting is that: most of this program is "new" to me, meaning the first time performing it in public. The oldest piece on the program is a *very* old one. I've known it literally half my life: I first learned of its existence, and learned it musically, on clarinet as a high school student. In years following, I would learn it and play it many times with different clarinetists and violists (Brahms himself transcribed the piece for viola after the initial performances and publications).

Why is the oldest, most familiar piece (to me) still posing questions? 

Brahms would have still been working with a piano that isn't quite like the modern concert grand. I've had the immense privilege of playing a piano much like his 1867 Streicher. That sound wasn't quite as robust or resonant as what a pianist usually plays when either of the Opus 120 sonatas are programmed. 

The questions I'm still asking (these are in no particular order):

1. How can I still find more colors and be more imaginative with voicing?

2. Are there any places that I can still be using more rubato?

3. Why has he written some passage the way that he has? 

There is one passage in particular that perplexes me. It falls in the middle of the development, and Brahms is really "in the wrong key" - sharp minor v. (!) The rhythmic scancion, syncopation, series of tied notes and sequences, and pianistic difficulty - something was really "up" with him in this section. I'm trying to poke around and see if I can't find a copy of the autograph. What I'm wondering if this gave him as much compositional trouble as it gives interpreters and technicians. 

In the meantime, I will keep wondering, and keep practicing.