András Schiff Lecture on the Bach Partitas

[Music] so [Music] good evening ladies and gentlemen we are here tonight to talk about the six partitas of johann sebastian the first part of his so-called clavier ubung in the year of 1731 johann sebastian bach published this work as his opus one and the publication was financed by himself no small undertaking because publishing was a very costly business those days it still is and the fact that he chose this work as his opus one and his first publication to date it means that he thought very very highly of this work bach was very self-critical and we all know that by 1731 he had written countless masterpieces before he came to leipzig already in weimar and in curtin for example the so-called english tweets were already written what is the difference between a sweet and the partita absolutely nothing they are synonyms however you could characterize the six english sweets as more of a genre all of them start with a large-scale prelude followed by dances they all include an almond a courant a sarah bound and a jig they all end with a jig similarly the much more intimate so-called six french sweets they immediately start with the almond followed by the quran the sarabande and they also all end with the jig in between these movements we have different galanteris minuets past piers berets etc now with the partitas bach wanted to show the world that he is a great encyclopedist and the great scientist we could say he wanted to summarize his knowledge and his art in every single genre and in the first part of the clavier ubuntu this is the partitas or the the art of the suite of dance movements and there is no prototype in in the partitas each and every one of them is very different and they all start with a large scale movement with a different title the first partita starts with a preludium [Music] the second one starts with something called the symphonia [Music] the third one in a minor is fantasia [Music] the third one this was the fourth d major starts with the french overture [Music] number five in g major preamble [Music] and finally the monumental sixth party in e minor starts with a movement called tokata [Music] [Applause] [Music] these are the six opening movements now bach published these works in this order but he never thought that there would be somebody crazy like myself who would play this in one evening and i apologize to johan sebastian bach and to you for playing these works in a different order and the reason is that this is a concert and those of you who have played the six partitas may know that to play this piece you have to be very calm you need tranquility and at the beginning of a recital one is a little bit nervous and therefore after having played the partitas for many many years many decades in the printed order i asked myself is it really necessary to start with number one and came to the conclusion that it was not absolutely necessary and so i came up with a different sequence starting with g major followed by a minor then b flat major then c minor [Music] then we make an interval and a client pause it and then comes d major and finally the sixth party to e minor stays at the end so here we have g you know six keys in ascending order forming a hexachord and the six partitas are beautifully divided into three works in major key and three works in minor key and so we are going to have then so major minor major minor major minor of course there are as many solutions as opinions and each of you can play the partitas in any other order but we are going to talk now about many objective and many subjective elements objective elements are obvious and they are not really open to question such as harmony counterpoint rhythm form structure but in musical interpretation it's the subjective elements that are very important of course within limits we have to follow the composer and the rules and the laws of the composition this is absolutely sacred in my opinion but how about a choice of tempo how about the choice of dynamics choice of articulation phrasing and musical character which is very important each and every piece each and every movement has a very distinct character which the performer has to define very clearly and it takes a certain civilian courage to say that this is what i think about this piece of music some might agree with it some might not agree with it we cannot please everyone but you have to take the responsibility for it and that's very important because otherwise all interpretations would be similar and there are no two interpretations that are similar even your own interpretation of the same piece is today is different from tomorrow because we are human we are not machines let's start now with the g major partita number five so preamble now we reach the dominant so this is a very playful movement g major again how do we characterize g major it is certainly not dramatic it's not tragic to me this is very harmonious very light if i would choose a color for it it would be a very fresh green but this is again subjective for some of you this might be yellow or red but all i'm trying to say is that music is not black and white and certainly not gray it has colors it has different characters um after this comes the almond which is a french dance of great serenity but the title almonds suggest german at this point it would be good to think of of bach the greatest of all german composers who has never been outside of germany but he studied this the french and the italian style in libraries in copies in wherever he could he studied all his life he ruined his eyesight by copying parts all his life and he to me is the greatest european i would put bach's portrayal on the flag of the european union because he achieved something that our politicians cannot achieve that here we have german french italian spanish the sarabande is the spanish dance the jig is a british dance and the polonese is a polish dance so everything comes together and this is a very beautiful idea and very important in our times so let me show you a little bit of this almond [Music] so [Music] so so very gently flowing triplets [Music] then comes quarrente this is a italian form of the quran the courant is a french dance but this is a faster form of the ground and he uses the italian term corrente like like current again very much flowing [Music] so very fast you are counting three in a bar one one two three one two three one two three one here then the movement that i played at the beginning of the evening sarah bond [Music] the sarah bond is always the emotional centerpiece of a suite it's the deepest it's the most stately as we said before it comes from spain and in 17th century spain it has been banned because of its very sensual and almost we could say erotic nature times have changed but this is a very beautiful movement and you can imagine like two wind instruments two oboes or obradamores moving in thirds and in six and in the base of yolada gamba or a bassoon [Music] full of suspensions apogeras [Music] it's a vocal term and of course i don't want to talk too much about the the use of the modern piano as opposed to the harpsichord of course this is a wrong instrument but from the vocal point of view when you sing an apocatura [Music] then any musical person will sing the second tone softer and there is only one instrument that cannot produce this and that's the harpsichord so something to think about on the other hand bach's favorite keyboard and instrument the clavichord could very well produce an apogeetura in a musical way and great harpsichordist can also do it of course with the use of agogics next movement is a very funny movement let's remember that classical music can also be funny and humorous why is this movement funny [Music] because it's it's very almost naive almost infantile any child can play this with two fingers even one finger [Music] but and robert schumann put this movement in his album for the eugene album for the young for his own children's musical education because a child can play it but it's very intricate on the other hand because this is a minuet a minuet visit dance in three four times as we all know and here [Music] in these last two bars we have the the minuet steps but before that bach confuses us because it's one two three one two three one two three one two three one two three one two three one two so in a one bar you have six eighths notes and six can be divided either two plus two times three or three times two so this is a very subtle joke a joke for connoisseurs for cameroon lip haber then comes a faster 3 8 dance called pass pa passing the feet and finally the jig which is in fugal form it's a it's a actually it's a fugue [Music] and the second part of this jig is very interesting he comes with a new theme and then later he he combines the two themes so you remember this team now let's look what happens in the second part yeah so at this point we should also remember that all the dance movements are in binary form so they have two parts and each half is repeated now if you are playing a repeat not just in bach also in mozart and beethoven and later then the repeat should not be like the photocopy of the first part otherwise it's not justifiable so the performer can either add ornaments or change the dynamics or change the phrasing or change the articulation but it should really not be twice exactly the same because that's not human so let's move on now to the a minor partita starting with with the fantasia which is a two-part invention but on a very large scale [Music] so bach has this unique ability to make two voices sound like us if we would be hearing three or four because he you have hidden harmonies that you are hearing [Music] so it's very intricate and it's wonderful that he achieves this with the greatest economy there is never one note too many with bach then the almond [Music] a minor can be characterized as a very dramatic key again if we think in terms of colors to me this is a deep burgundy like a tintoretto picture or some of the late rembrandts but again very subjective point anyway it is certainly dramatic this is this is not a mellow key then comes again the italian cuarente [Music] then sarah bound but listen to the difference of this sarah bond from the previous ceremony [Music] let me just play a little bit of the g major sarabande [Music] and this one is is moving in quavers in eighth notes so it has a much more um almost agitated it's an agitated sarah bond with these bass notes they are like heartbeats after this we have two very unusual movements before we come to the final jig which we do not have in any other sweets or partitas one is called burlesque and the other is called scherzo i don't know of any other burlesque except in bayla bartok's sixth string quartet but that's a little bit later and so this this is a funny movement you have everybody is laughing let's see what is funny about this so so so far the only thing is when buck writes vertical strokes on on these quarter notes so when we have short notes they represent a funny element but let me play for you the second part of this burlesque [Music] now when we get to this point this is a unison and in counterpoint in polyphony there is no unison it's actually forbidden because a parallel octave or parallel quint this is forbidden in all theory books so bach is going against the law here and and in a very polyphonic piece puts in one bar of unison which is forbidden and in my opinion that's why this is called burlesque he's making fun of the rules then the scherzo movement [Music] so this doesn't need much explanation scale so it's also a game a play but scarcely is then used by the viennese classics and and the romantics of course it takes over the function of the minuet in viennese classical music and symphonies and sonatas but as far as i know bach never uses the skeletal anywhere else and finally the jig so very nervous movement in a perpetual mood so it's in 12 8 time and it's always moving there is there is no gap in it so [Music] so all notes are important but some are more important than others in an orwellian manner so the second part is an inversion so we had in the first part now in all these dance movements bach starts on the tonic so in this case a minor and the first part always ends on the dominants yeah and in the second part he doesn't have a model sometimes he goes to the mediant which is yeah for example or the subdominant so there he is varying the solutions here and then sooner or later he comes back to the tonic and he has an incredible sense of proportions johan sebastian all these movements if you look at the number of bars they are always even numbers so possible to be divided by by four by six certainly by two but um it never an odd number but these even-numbered phrases can be subdivided by asymmetries by hemiolas by different devices but the sense of proportion is is amazing and he always comes to the perfect balance so let's move on to partita number one which everybody knows and it's very beautiful [Music] you see now i am not at all nervous so it's the right time to play the b flat party tom and i characterized b flat to me this is a silver color and it has the utmost serenity and peacefulness so after this [Music] he closes this prelude and goes into this most beautifully flowing almond [Music] so the central thought in the b flat part it is the b flat major skill [Music] and in the almond [Music] then comes again an italian ground quarante in triple time full of triplets so gently bouncing then comes the center piece sarah bound [Music] so [Music] when bach wrote his two and three-part inventions in the preface he emphasizes the need of the cantabile the singing way of playing a keyboard instrument and we must always remember this many people think very wrongly that the piano is a percussion instrument this is not true it's only played percussively too often but if if you hit the piano it hits back and all instruments including this one and any keyboard instrument they are imitations of the human voice the human voice is what what we should always try to get closer to and if we are not sure how to play a phrase or how to phrase it we just have to sing it we don't have to have the voice of fisher disco but each one of us can sing i'm i'm sure of that and that the singing gives you the right answer after the sarah bond we have a pair of gallon teres two minuets which are very charming again just two voices but so he is hiding a third voice and the second minuet is like being played by woodwind instruments [Music] two ovals two bassoons then the final piece is a jig and it's a tour de force from the instrumental point of view because it's written for crossed hands you always have to cross the hands in 1731 bach was still able to do this because he didn't drink so much beer yet later we don't have any more hand crossing so i can still manage it [Music] so it's all a dialogue between the soprano and the bass and in between you have this [Music] beautiful harmonies it's wonderful how bach changes dissonance and consonants and then this movement [Music] obviously this is a harpsichord piece for for two manuals but it's perfectly playable on the piano without traffic jams next comes the very dramatic c minor partita which starts with this movement called symphonia and it's in three parts this symphonia this is the only movement that has tempo indications by bach let's remember that with bach we performers or interpreters of bach we have incredible liberties because he hardly ever tells us anything there is never a tempo almost never very very seldom dynamics phrasing articulation um also how how short or how long are the notes this is very much a matter of taste matter of knowledge how familiar you are with the style there is this wonderful book many of you must know everybody should know it i think it's the greatest book on music by carl philippe emmanuel bach the real art of playing keyboard instruments um obviously you couldn't be closer to the source because it's bach's son and himself a wonderful musician and composer and one of the greatest keyboard players and this is a a source of of constant learning to us when he writes about my zelig a father so my beloved father used to say that you should not use the thumb on the half tones which are today the black keys on the piano this is not a racial remark black keys or white keys but it really makes a lot of sense not to use the thumb which is a very clumsy it's not even a finger that's why it's called a thumb and some of us have ten of them so it it's it's a very good advice and and philippe manuel bach gives us wonderful solutions of fingering and phrasing and know how to solve the problems of of general bus of figured bass etc and at the end he says it's all a matter of gusto it's a matter of good taste wonderful remark why does he say it because already in his time there was a lot of very bad taste and times have not changed very much in that sense so the symphonia starts with this movement [Music] so very stately very festive with dotted rhythms of course if you read the score literally this is what buck writes on the paper [Music] yeah but we know from you know musicology and period instrument practice and historically informed interpretations we cannot learn enough from them and it's very important whether we play the piano or the harpsichord but the rhythm of of a french overture is that it's written like this [Music] but you have to double dot it so [Music] and also these very massive chords if if you play the chords together they sound too massive and too too heavy and therefore when you play them arpeggio then it's much more resonant and and lighter now the second part of this symphonia is an ariozo [Music] the first part was marked grave adagio very seldom does bhak give us temple americans so this is grave grave and adagio actually adagio means in italian at ease it doesn't mean slow but because he puts grave before it it it shows us the that he wants a slow opening now this this part is called andante [Music] and andare in italian as you all know means at the walking space so you have to do a lot of musicians think that andante is a slow movement andante is never slow it's walking and then after in some [Music] do [Music] we come to an allegro which is very orchestral and again only using two voices but we get the fullness of of an orchestra again the the oral illusion of many voices so there are two main ideas in the c minor partita one is this stone sequence and the other one is the an interval of a tense yeah you will see that these two ideas are present in all the movements this arimosum [Music] if you think of the saint matthew passion [Music] yes now almond [Music] yeah so you heard in the tenor voice so and this is which is an augmentation of this oh and closings on the dominance so [Music] the rising tense now for the first time we have a courant in the original french form which is a much slower and stately dance [Music] so it's in three two time one and two and three and so on and this this french cool hounds are very much suited to what we call note inegal which is that you are you have written like this but we play it a little bit unevenly [Music] so this is very much the style of ramo and cupra and the french clefts and composers that bach must have known intimately although he had never been to france now sarah bond already the first four knows [Music] very tricky [Music] after this we have another new movement called hondo we all know what a rondo is but again this is very new in bach he uses it in the famous b minor suite for flute and orchestra so a hundo is around yes so people are dancing in around a group of people and after they have danced for eight measures one couple comes into the middle and dances a couple yeah and after that they jump back to the circle and and around again so a b a b a is is the form or a b a c a but all the a sections are varied and this is very french and very light okay actually how many bars were these 12 no i think so 16 doesn't matter but again not not an odd number always even number now after this comes the first plane back to the circle yes second co-play back to the circle but with the variations yes so and then the third one so back to the circle with a variation and that's the end of the hondo now instead of finishing this partita with a jig because he is not repeating himself so this is the only party that does not have a jig but it finishes with a capriccio and as the title suggests this is capricious and very wild and it's in 2 4 time [Music] so you hear again they're they're rising the ascending tents and of course when it comes in low voices it has a comic element so that's the second party the c minor ending with the capricho of course bach has written capricho's before you know the one capriccio on the departure of his beloved brother that's a very early work written in 1704 when he was still a teenager so maybe he was thinking back of that now two more partitas left and they are they are the biggest um the d major starts with a french overture very festive very shiny very bright a french overture is a music that composers like jean-baptiste luly composed for the court of louis xiv in versailles so you have very festive music and you have to imagine trumpets and horns and drums [Music] so [Music] golden color and all these movements bach has also among his four orchestral switch two are in the key of d major and they are all using three trumpets and tympani which give this music this very very festive very uh pomposo character the second part of a french overture is always a fast section which is actually a fugue [Music] very strict three-part fugue very lively and the movement closes with this fugue so the first section which usually in the french overture the opening section returns after the fugue not here after the overture comes an almond which to me and to many people is the most beautiful movement in all the partita movements it cannot really be analyzed and i cannot tell you why this is so beautiful but just listen to it [Music] do [Music] so [Music] it is just um the the invention of the melodic invention and the harmonic invention is really extraordinary after this we come back to the court music with a very glorious french ground [Music] these very fast they suggest horse riding so maybe the pipers and the trumpeters are are on horsebacks here again to connect the courant to the sarabound bach gives us a beautiful arya here [Music] [Applause] this is an area that could be in any cantata or even any passion like something like that the sarabound is again the central point of serenity and tranquility [Music] after this just a simple little minuet [Music] and the closing jig is a toward the force of it's in 9 16 time so la tata so [Music] so it's again jig but it's a fugue and so you have the tonic chord [Music] then the seventh chord so and the second part brings in a new theme and continues with the double counterpoint combining the two themes listen to this [Music] so this is fantastic composition i cannot admire the master enough and with partita number six he goes even a step i wouldn't say higher but deeper starts with a tokata and e minor is the key of this pc [Music] so passion passionate leiden shaft [Music] [Applause] [Music] in his youth he had written many tokatas and this comes from also from italy from fresco baldi and those masters and they are improvisatory pieces so like these passages [Music] [Applause] we performers we must always remember to keep the pulse the pulse is our heartbeat but it cannot be played with a metronome the metronome is a silly instrument and it should never be used not in bach and nowhere else really as a reference maybe but it is not a help to play this music with a metronome uh after this opening section comes a fugue so so in music we have as we said singing cantabile elements but just as important are the speaking elements the rhetorical elements so this is a spoken text in baroque rhetoric this is something like that we we have we are bound with god almighty and we have to die self-evident and let me just play a little more [Music] so do so after the fugue the opening tokata returns and closes very dramatically the following almond couldn't be more resignation [Music] so [Music] it never ceases to astonish me how in bach's music the secular and the sacred elements can be found side by side so partita sweet is a very secular composition and here we are in the middle of the saint matthew passion and vice versa in the sentiment your passion or the saint john passion or the b minor mass you will find plenty of dance movements so the two worlds are beautifully coexisting but the the main thing is that bach was a deeply religious person he believed very deeply and whether we share his belief or not but at the moment when we are playing bach or listening to bach this is self-evident that we have to be on his wavelength now the next italian quarante is very funny indeed [Music] because only two voices and very intricate counterpoint so contrapunct counterpoint point against point so one note against the other and the two voices the two hands they almost never coincide it's always syncopated always on together then comes another air and arya [Music] which is again just to prepare us for the extraordinary depth of the following sarah bond which is really something so modern [Music] extraordinary dissonances harmonies it all sounds improvised but it is very very carefully notated uh let me go on because the second part of this sarah bond is is even more unusual [Music] do so it's getting very very dissonant and this must have sounded extraordinary and very unusual for for listeners in box time and even today we don't know where we are after this comes a movement we haven't had yet in the sixth part it is tempo agavet is a very gentle french dance which always starts with two upbeats for example in the fifth french suite or for example for violin solo yeah now this one is again in e minor [Music] i have to speak here about musical notation if some of you have the score with you bach writes on the paper this rhythm but this would sound very strange so again we have to solve the problem of what is on the paper and how do we interpret it like sacred texts and um it's like like spelling for example if you take my name which is shif spelled in s-c-h-i-f-f-n-g it means a boat yes a ship and if i show my name to a hungarian he will pronounce it because he or she doesn't know how it's pronounced and italian will say skiff yeah so you have to know how is something notation and how you pronounce it and a gov this govot is written like so the dotted notes are always against the triplets and but it sounds cocophonic so you have to even them out and and with the final jig this will be even more complicated uh because bach notates this in four four times so i play for you what's on the paper [Music] but he writes on the top of this movement jig so a jig is never in four four time it's like if you would play the blue danube walls [Music] it's not the walls so because you cannot dance to that and so we have to make this into a jig in 12 8 time yeah this way it's a jig but again this is something that's always disputed among interpreters and musicologists and musicologists will tell you yes there are other jigs in this notation and you should play it as it as it is notated well we cannot solve this debate but again civilian courage as a performer you have to take your responsibility and to say that in my modest opinion it is like that another thing which is not a matter of test is that if you look at this theme it could almost be by schoenberg because of the 12 notes of the scale only two are missing this one but those two come when the comets when the second theme comes then you will have all the 12 notes and if you count the number of these notes then you will come to the conclusion of fourteen now bach was a great lover of the kabbalah and mathematics and numerology so if you take the alphabet and you give to each letter a number like a is 1 b is 2 3's 3 etc then you add up b a c and h then you come to the number 14. and therefore this this cannot be an accident also for example a theme like the first fugue of the weld pepper clavier it's also 14 notes and also this one so it's a it's a self-portrait it's like like an autograph he puts his signature and it's it's like like when in in the night watch rembrandt puts his own portraying the in the upper corner very discreetly so that would sum it up but i don't want to finish with words so let me just play for you one short sarah bound and then i will thank you very much for your kindness and attention [Music] [Music] you

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Keywords: masterclass, lecture, concert, piano sonata, piano concerto, classical music, andras schiff, js bach, bach, Bach Partitas, BWV 825-830, class, academy, academic, pianist, keyboard, solo piano

Id: JVjBIKNed_Q

Length: 93min 9sec (5589 seconds)

Published: Wed May 11 2022