Schiff on Bach

[Music] [Applause] we both thank you very much i wanted to say first what an honor it is for me to be here with one of the greatest pianists in the world and i wanted to remind andra she probably doesn't remember that the first time we met was 30 years ago you were six and i was seven and i interviewed you about bach and here we are 30 years later talking about bach so i i think it's kind of extraordinary but not surprising and i wondered if we might start before we get into the discussion if we might start with a little music perhaps some bach all right [Music] do [Music] [Applause] is there any particular reason you chose that piece sir yes i love it to me this is this is just this symphonia three-part invention in f minor but it you you hear all the essence of bach within two minutes and um to me that's the that's the most important thing a lot of composers they don't know how to be economical they talk too much and this is a great example of how to say a lot in a very short span of time with not one unnecessary note if you take away one note from this piece you you change something essential and to me it's a it's a deeply spiritual piece that's one of the fascinating things to me about bach that the the sacred and the secular go hand in hand here you have an instrumental piece for keyboard and yet you are you could be in the middle of the sentiment you passion and vice versa you you do the scent matthew passion or the b minor mass and you have dance movements so and they come from the very same person it seems to me that as you just said that bach has everything there's always everything there um and i wonder if perhaps that's why he's so universally revered uh you know there are many cases of great thinkers in other fields who say that when they came into contact with box music it changed their lives do you have some thoughts about this idea of bach as the universal musician i cannot answer that objectively because subjectively certainly he is to me his divine presence and the greatest composer of all times uh most people would agree on that i think the if if you really dislike bach you keep quiet about it it's really something to be ashamed of you know i know people who don't like shakespeare i don't they don't like rembrandt and they don't like bach but it's not something to be proud of it's their problem it's may seem strange to us that in his own time there were plenty of people who didn't hold him in such high regard do you have some thoughts about that yes bach never chose the easy way and he's incredibly demanding to to listen to even today emotionally intellectually demanding it's anything but light and entertainment it's really there is no element of that although there is plenty of joy in the music i think there is even plenty of humor in it but it's very sophisticated humor when you look at the quadriped the last variation of the goldbergs where he is using popular german folk songs which with very naughty words that however those folk songs were were obviously known to people of the time they are not known today so people are listening to the goldbergs and they think they are listening to something something holy and sacred which it is in a way parts of it again this the secular when when you listen to the 25th variation again you are in the same mature passion [Music] then you listen to this this cabbages and turnips have driven me away from you yeah so it's not exactly sacred yes yes shades of beethoven who did similar things yes and and so there from there comes haydn's humor and beethoven's humor and a lot of those composers after that who are very great but they have no humor where is humor in even schubert not in that sense in chopin that's not not criticism but to me humor is very important i'm very sorry for people who don't feel that there is place for humor in art and in music but it's not it should not be vulgar it's sophisticated humor so it needs also intelligent listeners people who are who know what what the joke is about but if you if you have to explain a joke it's too late or if nobody laughs but then you know you have to know how to tell a joke so if somebody will play this last variation which it's possible i have heard it like that it's not but it's not very funny and and and it's wrong because if if you know what these fog songs are about then you cannot play it this way it's not a matter of opinion or taste i mean there are some things in interpretation which are a matter of personal taste and other things which are not a matter of doubt or question your mention of schubert brings to mind the fact that you said once that the way into schubert to understand shubert is is through the songs is there a way into bach or is it just everything no it's not everything certainly again i think it's there is the protestant church music and the protestant chorale and the cantatas and and and language really i mean it's universal and international but but bach spoke no no other languages apart from german maybe latin yes that's why the to me the b minor mass is is the quintessential bach piece because it's not in german so to me it's more universal than the passions which are in german however his language was was german and and all these all these chorales are in german so you don't have to be german but it doesn't hurt to to be familiar with the idiom because it also dictates the the rise and fall of the music however i have to add here that bach wrote for example an overture in french style which i will play here he wrote a concerto in the italian style and also all the keyboard concertos or the brandenburg concertos are in the italian style now buck spoke neither italian nor french maybe a few words and he has never been outside of germany this is very important all his contemporaries look look at handel look at scarletti i mean scarletti at least he traveled from italy to portugal and spain which was already a major distance in that time and handel was a real traveler in the cosmopolitan and johann sebastian bach stayed in germany all his life and he was still so familiar with all the styles of the of the time when he writes this italian concerto it's really everybody knows it but it's it's a tour de force because he writes a concerto without an orchestra but you have the sensation of having the orchestra the tutti and hearing and then you have the soloist the concertina just exposed with that i mean nobody has done that before i mean all right you you have an orchestra and the soloist like uh this is like the model of corelli or vivaldi but but bach studied those works and actually made very beautiful transcriptions of it for the organ for the harpsichord of italian masters and then he incorporated that knowledge into his own art but he has never never been to those places this is something that i find fascinating i do too your um your playing of the 25th variation of the goldbergs reminded me of another question i wanted to raise with you uh which was uh bach the concert the musical conservative or bach the progressive or and radical uh he seems to have both sides um and i'm wondering if you think about this when you're when you're performing various uh pieces from the well-tempered for example yes this is an important question and to this i would answer that if you look at maybe the two greatest geniuses in music and mozart i don't think that they were particularly original neither of them that's not their main virtue i think the main virtue is that they they like a sponge they collect information they they collect knowledge and they make something greater out of it than the sum of its parts i would not call back the most innovative composers i think even handel was more innovative scarlett certainly in his own way but certainly carl philippe his son was more innovative and the the generation after bach did not appreciate him they they thought of him as a conservative as somebody per se it's finished now we are we are going on on a new road and then bach was forgotten really he was forgotten until until mendelssohn performed in in 1829 the sense mature passion in berlin and still composers like like mozart you can see in in mozart's string quartets dedicated to joseph hein and that's the point when he discovers bach and he's he's starting to write fugues and and fugati in the finale of the g major string quartet and his works are on a different on a higher level because he discovered bach so so it was very important for for mozart for beethoven for for schumann for chopin for mendelssohn to to know bach but until mendelssohn did the saint matthew passion these people had to go to to the library of baron from sweden in vienna to to look at manuscripts and and contemporary copies because nobody nobody played this music people were not interested in old music those days this is still only to in in the newest creations this is something composers today can be very nostalgic about is is that why you include mendelssohn on your orchestral concerts yes so obviously i mean also i adore mendelssohn and i think he's he's a giant of a musician and i consider him highly underrated even today a lot of people don't appreciate when they say yes a sentimental saloon composer it's nonsense it's highly insulting and not just because of his this rediscovery of bach but already when mendelssohn wrote string symphonies at the age of 12 i mean he has a complete mastery of of counterpoint and fantastic knowledge of of of bach of late beethoven quartus it's astonishing of the child composer well the octet which i think he wrote when he was 16 and it's just unbelievable um so uh let's let's talk about the uh the elephant in the room which is um playing bach on a modern piano do you want to share your thoughts that's the elephant yes well it's certainly an elephant but but it's a very useful elephant because it can do a lot of things if you ask what's the right instrument for bach it's impossible to answer that question look at the 48 the the well-tempered clavier we cannot say what instrument it was written for clavier is a zombie wartime a collective word it it means all the keyboard instruments that were available for buck at the time so that is first and foremost the clavichord beautiful little instrument for in a room but already in this room maybe in the first row you would be able to hear it but already the second row you will have problems and yet this was buck's favorite instrument and i have one of these in my home in florence and i love playing it but really only for myself and maybe for one listener but it's an essential instrument not very practical then there is the harpsichord which is more a more public instrument and certainly wonderful for certain pieces the goldberg variations is a good example or the italian concerto really specifically written for a harpsichord with two manuals and then there is bach's most important instrument which is the organ so it's all plus there there they used to have pedal harpsichords and all kinds of hybrid animals so it's all a collection of of that but it's you cannot really now say which specific prelude and fugue was intended for which instrument and yet i think this elephant is the only one that can somehow if you treat it well do justice to to all of these works you cannot play all the preludes and fugues on the clavichord certainly not on the harpsichord i mean people do but i suffer from that because you have all these apo jaturas if you play an apocatura for example you see the second note has to be any any musical person i'm sure you there you are all musical in this room if i ask you to sing an apocatura then you will sing so speedy so speedy the second syllable is softer than the first if it's not then it's unmusical and the harpsichord is not able to to play that i mean it's just not possible you have to make huge agoji changes and i think that distorts the music i mean it becomes something in bulgarian rhythm because if i play and that's what the harpsichordists tend to do because there is otherwise no possibility to make to to make that second note softer so therefore i find that all these p these kind of very vocal pieces are not suited to the harpsichord and then you have the organ you have the end of the a minor fugue you know which starts you know it's a monstrous fugue and it's here [Music] you hear that pedal note and you cannot play this the end of this field with two hands it's just not possible so that proves this is an organ fugue but it's the only one which is obviously an organ fugue and um so this is the only example in all of bach where i must touch this the sustaining pedal which i hate to do not because of a dogma we will we should talk about this because it's one of my e-day fixes and i have been seriously attacked on this by a very great fellow pianist i will not mention the name who said yeah how can how dare you not use pedal in bach and i say why why should i use pedal in bach because all the great pianists of the past have used pedal in bach is that an argument i don't think so certainly in all those instruments that bach had at his disposal the sustaining pedal did not exist it's it's a it's a much later invention and it can do terrible damage destroying the the voice leading destroying the the clarity of the counterpoint i mean the clarity is essential in this music you cannot play like if you are like talking with your mouth full you have to talk speak clearly articulate they won't understand you otherwise and it's very strange that these very same pianists who then attack me on not playing bach with pedal then you take beethoven's music the first composer who really uses the sustaining pedal creatively in the weldstein sonata the beginning of the last movement you know this is all in one pedal [Music] yes it's blurred so what that's what he wanted he didn't and but when you take piano lessons then your piano teacher tells you when you use the pedal then you change pedal on each harmony that's that's what we are told no if you don't do it you you get hit on the head or on the hand or wherever but this is not what beethoven wanted so so why don't we take him seriously then i know the arguments then all the all the opposition says the pianos in beethoven time were different then i asked them have you played on beethoven's piano no well i have and it has a different timbre but as far as this thing is concerned the you know pedaling through harmonies it's blurred there too it's it's an idea and then then then it's very important then after this blurred sound and beethoven says you know then there is no pedal so it's it's this blurred sound opposed to the dry sound seco and nonsecco so i'm this i'm going on on a different road now but you know what i'm i'm getting at that so why why use pedal in bach and why to use pedal in beethoven when he's asking for it i mean i take that seriously i think this is not a matter of choice i think another issue that's related to this something that you said about articulation in bach that some some people play bach always legato and some people play bach always staccato and in either case you're in deep trouble if you want to bring out the the sense of a phrase um i don't know if you want to show us well that used to be really the case i mean this glorious 19th century style of piano playing where with a lot of pedal indeed but they really played everything legato and then comes the kite the after the second world war where they they exaggerate in the other way playing everything detached and now luckily from there are also very good things about the early music movement i used to be rather ignorant about it and then very critical and now i am a little bit more objective so there is a lot to learn from it for example varied articulation yes that that you have to if you have four sixteenths notes then you you can take four sixteenths notes let's see you can play for legato play for the tag or you can play two plus two or you can play one plus three or three plus one so there are endless variations and and bach seldom gives you an an indication of of that and you have to use your your imagination and and your knowledge of style that you know how how it should go there are several possibilities but it has to be imaginative i don't know let's take any theme now um for example i mean in the 19th century people would play the it's nonsense and then they would play it's another nonsense and it's very ugly so you need to play something and then something more elaborate so you you have a one short sentence another short sentence and then a long sentence and that has to come across bach hardly ever gives us tempo markings um also phrase markings dynamics we're we're often very lost so um how do you determine what the character of a piece is what the tempo should be and so on well that that is very personal but again it comes from from experience or how many other works of bach you know and how what you associate it with there are also some real indications that the the the preludes are are easier to characterize especially in the first book uh in the second book the the preludes 20 years later become much more complex and much more polyphonic so it's harder to to come to terms with those but also there is a an idea of the of the different keys and the the symbolism of those keys which a lot of musicians of bach's time like kienberger and matison try to characterize it's very entertaining because they never agree on anything i mean for one theoretician a certain e major is lyrical and and pastoral and and for the other one it's highly dramatic but but it's still pretty obvious you take a piece like this you know so this is the pastoral to me there is no no question if you know the the christmas oratorio or you have those movements when they're you you have the sheep grazing and occasionally you have a tempo marking by bach very seldom in the 48 for example one of the greatest of the set the last of book one the b minor and here preludes he marks and andante is not a slow movement that's also a misconception of many musicians and comes from the italian verb andare so in in walking motion yes so when you have a movement and it's a la breve so you are counting two in a bar and not four in a bar so trio sonata you have you have two oboes and the bassoon and playing in this and then you have a fugue which is largo and this is very slow [Music] indeed so so it's so chromatic it's you have all the 12 tones in the first two statements it's unbelievably modern music and again you have that's another good example of the apogeaturas and the so speedy why i don't think this could be played on the harpsichord because [Music] i must have those second notes softer some people might disagree i don't mind but this is really not harpsichord music and here you have a very slow tempo marking by bach but it's again what is a temple marking i mean when you see an adagio by bach is nothing by bruckner and that's why it's important to have a certain experience with those instruments of bach's time what they were capable of and it's and the same is true for for beethoven for schuberton and for later music no i mean if you ever play the forte piano from schuberth's time then you know what what are the speed limits what what is a slowness that is just not possible and what is a fastness that's also not possible and so then then why people come and play this sonata in this temple you can have dinner and they are still playing it [Music] very great pianist it's unbelievable he plays it even slower than that and plays all the repeats it's it's and and if you ever try to play this on a on a conrad graph i mean you you can't because the the sound dies and and i think we have to observe these parameters i think this makes it very clear why you object to some of the great romantic transcriptions like busoni and so on well object who am i to object i mean well you wrote i don't like i don't like them i don't like them but please if you if you like them then take them listen to them i don't i don't play them and i don't listen to them because i you know our piano literature is enormously rich we are very fortunate we have wonderful music i mean 10 lifetimes are not enough to play just the great music why do we need transcriptions why do we need if you are a pianist and you you love schubert leader then choose a singer ask a singer and play the schubert songs but don't play them in least transcription i mean that completely destroys schubert's schubert's music to me but you know let's not get into list now okay let's talk about the well-tempered clavier um can you give us a sense of what the point was of the these collections it's uh you can only speculate because we don't know the answer why why but came back to this this idea obviously the first one was highly successful so he wanted to to try it again and say you know 20 years is a very long time i can say that because my there are about 20 years or 25 years between my two recordings of this and you could ask why do you make another recording and i cannot answer that really actually i feel a bit embarrassed about it because you know it's a wonderful opportunity to to do it again but to me it's i don't feel that i'm that important that it should be done again and again also i've had the opportunity to do some of these works again and then it was very very useful really after 20 years it's not that you feel differently about a piece of music but you have lived with it and you have experienced other things and that all shows somehow it's like a maturing wine a good wine so that's where good wine is not very good when it's two years old i mean it doesn't matter how hard you practice or study these preluse after the first five years you are just a beginner and it needs time and it needs space and you know to to digest it and think about it so for bach it was probably also very important to come back to the idea and he has had a lot of material he took a lot of the fugues from earlier material some people call bach a great recycler i don't mean this in a derogatory manner but certainly it's his right to to take material from from earlier music and and put it in in a new new dress maybe transpose it it's also interesting i was talking about the the different tonalities and what they mean and yet bach is the first who would write the same piece he would write you know e major violin concerto you know the same one for keyboard and then he's using eighth notes you know and for the violin concerto it's quarter notes very very different character different tempo also the orchestration is different there and then he adds a whole left hand part for the keyboard so it's not really recycling but recreating i was going to ask you how your ideas about this music have changed over the years but maybe that's a little difficult to say i was listening to your earlier goldbergs and and the later goldbergs and and looking myself for what differences i was finding i didn't know if you had some you should know this better than i do i have no idea okay what differences did you find did i find they're very subtle i have to say i mean both both have certain qualities that uh i love about your playing one is impeccable clarity and the other is heartfelt that's that's always there there's a tenderness and there's something you know it's just filled with heart i find um uh i would say that in the earlier version of there was a touch more sentimentality perhaps and in the later version the touch more cohesiveness yes maybe you see i don't know but thank you you are much too kind i don't didn't want you to to give me compliments but it's um sentimentality yes i i don't like sentimentality you see and i also found that in the earlier version or when i listened to some i don't like to listen to my own recordings it was a white waste of time but sometimes just to learn from it and and i did do find some sentimental touches which i did not consider sentimental at the time and i think with age you you get uh a little bit more secure you you have more self-confidence you don't want to to be interesting that's very very very important i don't want to be interesting i don't mind if somebody finds my playing very boring others find it highly interesting because i see all the other subjects that i talk to people and what what do they find interesting and what's boring when i was a young man i used to find switzerland a very boring country now i i think it's highly interesting you know because i i'm not looking for those things anymore i don't need to be entertained and so that's an advantage of of age maybe that you don't want to to impress you don't want to entertain you you you know that this is a great piece of music and it can take care of itself all you have to do is not not to ruin it it's already a lot and their bach is is is very generous much more generous than let's say mozart because if i play any movement of bach let's say right play or i could choose any movement of bach you know [Music] show me one piece i don't know doesn't matter some things are important in character you know if you you can still play but you are not going to destroy the music it's still there like a diamond but try this with any mozart piece and you will have disastrous consequences and i don't know why that is because mozart music is just so so delicate when in timbre in the in the touch in the in the tonal uh colors and in the in the tempe i mean it's just a little bit off of the the middle road and and it's it feels utterly wrong and not parked so so buck is very generous let's talk about the goldbergs um what do you make of this story uh about how it was commissioned for for an insomnia problem it's what the italian says maybe it's not true but it's it's well found it's a lovely story uh insomnia yes i find it hard to believe this story that this little goldberg who was a court harpsichordist the pupil of bach and he was the harpsichordist of the count kaiserling for whom the work was written he commissioned it and he was 14 years old and i doubt it very much that the 14 year old can can manage the goldberg variations maybe today in china any 14 year old can manage it but those days hardly and also when the count supposedly said on one of those nights when he couldn't sleep that year my dear goldberg now play me one of my variations but this is interesting because today we would not dream of playing one of one of this i mean just to take out one of the variations it's some some somehow has achieved a holy status it's it's a whole work and it's it's untouchable you cannot cannot just extract from it and obviously they did at that time if the story is true and also you know buck never thought of of this as you know as a concert piece there were no concerts as such as we know them today so life was different society was different it had different different functions so i think it's a important very important work in bach's uvra because he took in this clavier ubuntu towards the end of his like the he always addresses a certain problem the first part are the six partitas so he takes the the baroque form of sweet writes a huge first movement a prelude or a tokata and then the dances and so it's raised on a on a level that was not known before the second as i said this italian concerto and the french overture it takes all the french and italian stylistic elements the second the third part is all for the organ e flat major prelude and fugue and the coral preludes and the four duets which are wonderful pieces that those i love to play on the piano and then the final part is the goldberg variation which is it takes the form of theme and variations which is something that he has very seldom used only three four times in his lifetime there is arya variata in early piece and then there the choral variations from from him here for organ the c minor passage and the famous shakon for solo violin that's theme and variation and so he was not so interested in variations because most of his contemporaries were writing very very brilliant very extroverted variations and and bach is not an extroverted composer that's very important to to notice so he takes the the idea of theme and variation and really it's a challenge for him to make an artistic statement but for him it was not so important to to listen to this or that it should be played it's it's just there sheer perfection and by the way i keep repeating this because there's still some people come now it used to be that nobody played the goldberg variations it was hidden in libraries then van der lundovska resurrected it beautifully on the harpsichord and naturally thanks to glenn gould it has achieved an unbelievable cult status thanks to glengold single-handedly as a result of which now everybody plays the goldberg variation kids play it they come they said what what else have you played of bach nothing not even a two-part invention and then they play this incredibly complex piece so i say all right now play for me the goldberg variations play play the theme so immediately they play you don't understand play the theme so they play again and they play it about ten times until i say you do do you know where the theme is and they don't and the theme is here [Music] so i ask how can you play this piece if you don't know that it should be forbidden but it's people play this and uh they don't they and they are also then i tell them okay then then put take the score and just play me the bass they are not able to only with the two hands because they they practice mechanically practicing mechanically is is a waste of time it's not not what intelligent humans should do they should practice a little less and think a little more of course gould's uh well his first goldbergs are kind of kaleidoscopic um so full of color and um you know all kinds of effects uh pianistic effects um you said you said about ghoul that he was a a master of counterpoint i think you said i'm wondering um what you think of some of the other you mentioned london just now what about some of the other interpreters of bach have any of them struck you as being important and well to me i mean not with the goldbergs which there is no recording of him but of the 48 edwin fisher i absolutely adore and again now we are talking about an older generation but but edwin fisher has really influenced me enormously and the older i get the more so and i get with age i have an um great great admiration for glenn gould but i i get go further and further and further away from it and closer to edwin fisher because you asked me a few minutes ago what what are the main main influences of backward or the the key to to box keyboard music and i said it's this cantata and the and the vocal tradition and the german language and i find that very strongly represented in fisher and also the the spirituality of of his playing you know there are these movements in the 48 which are really deeply religious there's just no question to me that uh something like this or this one i could go on usually the the piece pieces in minor [Music] king and in all these pieces fisher is always to me absolutely right and good makes a parody of it and i cannot forgive him for that because this is okay music is subjective but it's not that subjective if we are talking about a crucifixion it's a crucifixion it's not a not a joke in the coffee shop and there should be clear distinctions in that and for therefore [Music] i i find that i go with edwin fisher i meant to ask you before you mentioned um box uh um how how few works we have a bach in the theme and variations category were there other keyboard works perhaps by other composers on on the scale of the goldbergs before the goldbergs came along yes from minor composers certainly but not on the not on this scale and not with this complexity i mean usually even either they would take the base that that's not unprecedented or usually they have human variations where the melody is being elaborated and ornamented and in a very virtuosic manner but bach's concept with the canons and the symmetry of of this piece that every third variation is a canon in increasing intervals it's absolutely colossal and this has not not been done before bach and certainly not until beethoven's diabetes variations which is a comparable achievement but a very different uh piece of music however i don't think that the diabetes would ever have been conceived without beethoven having known the goldberg variations there is no proof of that but it's obvious um before we run out of time i was gonna i was gonna ask you to demonstrate some of the goldbergs the variations that i love but uh before we run out of time we should move on to some of the other repertoire um and um and so uh oh but let me ask you one thing before you mention the quad labet uh and the and the folk songs do you think what do you think bach's meaning was in in ending with this is it was it simply to it was time to lighten up or it's time to lighten up in this com time to come back on earth after the really after the deepest point of this set which is the 25th minor key variation that vandalandovska called the black pearl and you just have to come back on earth and uh also this is um this is a very very human very very down-to-earth message you know that's why i find bach so wonderful that he's he's one of us the best of us but one of us yes something to aspire to um it's also important that after the quarterback this this area returns but after if you play all the repeats it's like 70 minutes later it's you you hear it with different ears because so much has happened so this is very important like you you see a person after two or three years and it's not the same even if she or he looks the same but it's not the same it's a and this and this is a miracle of of time and and time is is is an essential part of music yes the the keyboard concertos the harpsichord concertos are usually called um you're going to be conducting and playing so i wanted to ask you about this um do you do you enjoy conducting have you been doing it a long time what i am not a not a conductor at all but i like doing it yes certainly it's also something that intrigues me enormously as a as a not a profession is a wrong word but it's a metis how do you do it what are the psychological elements of this which are considerable how do you deal with people it's very important because as a pianist you are you are a loner you are always alone you have to practice your own travel alone you you can become a little bit obsessed with that and you can counter balance that luckily with playing chamber music and playing playing with friends and colleagues but when you go and play a concert to solo it's with an orchestra with a conductor you never really have more than minimal contact with the musicians and i do miss that so i started to do this with the bach keyboard concertos and then later with the mozart and beethoven and after having done all these concerted then i started to do symphonic repertoire and and formed my own orchestra the capella andrea barca which is which gives me the greatest pleasure and joy and occasionally i do things with other orchestras but i'm fully aware of the fact that i'm not a conductor and yet you know certain things you can do maybe in a more intimate way even in later concerti i recently had the pleasure of doing the schumann concha to a lot without a conductor and i have played it with hundreds of conductors some very good ones it was never good and this time it was always good and you know all the conductors they only want to rehearse and how do they conduct here here they beat [Music] and the orchestra is never together so and there so i just let them play tum sit there like that it was perfect every time so you don't always need the police there it doesn't doesn't help and and something even so complicated like the schumann concerto but it's a it's a piece of chamber music where the piano is integrated into the hole it's always always there but sometimes it's it's not the most important instrument no you know sometimes you you play a duet with the clarinet you play [Music] and here the piano is not so important and yet you always have this piano sitting in the front and he is like the center of the universe and there is not this chamber music concert so i'm just telling this as an example that there are sometimes advantages of not having a conductor but then there are limits also you have to be aware of that do you think about i'm sure you must the fact that that when bach performed these concertos you know the orchestra was different the venues were tiny uh the obligator was being done by a harpsichord and all of that stuff how does any of that figure into the into what you do when you present them well obviously if you if you play them at every fisher hall it's different from the cafe timmerman where buck played it for maybe 20 people um yes certainly and i'm and we are using modern instruments and and yet i think that the spirit the spirit should be the the same i mean we are not not inflating this music because we are playing bigger venues hopefully not you should you should not not do that i mean also it's a it's wrong to think that in a large hole you have to produce more volume you have to yeah focus focus better yes and certainly articulate better so that people will will hear you however if you ask me then ideally i would not play in these huge halls i never feel terribly comfortable in them some some are wonderful like carnegie hall really but basically there is an intimacy of of music that is that is lost if if we are playing it to two or three thousand people and yet what is the answer so you you'd sometimes play for two or three thousand people but keep it in mind that you go and play in more intimate venues and luckily we also have that right here in in new york if that's why i love to play at the y or it or its uncle or even at vile hall it's very beautiful what's wrong with it just you play for 200 people and there you are very near so it's it's a very intimate encounter well let's uh let's finish up by talking about the dance suites the partitas the french sweets uh the uh the english sweets and so on and um was bach's interest in the dance suites simply that most people writing secular music at this time were writing dance sweets or was there something beyond that is he interested in in dance because all of his music to my ears is inflected with dance rhythms yes certainly and yet you i don't think this is this is highly stylized dance music it's not something that you play at the at the village bowl and people are dancing to it but the the roots of it are there and obviously this was very very popular at the time because all of bach's contemporaries used it and again his knowledge of mostly of the french cleft same music of of coupling and drama is is obvious there but again like we have the very very monumental english suites which are very public pieces and then the french sweets are very private pieces and very intimate to me they are like like beautiful each french sweet is to me like a vermeer picture very delicate and very very small but unbelievably beautiful and very precious and probably the most important are other partitas which for him was very important because he published the partitas at his own cost as his opus one that's first part of klaviribong and there's a a real concept there but there is a concept in the in the french switch too because the french switch the first three are in the minor key the second three are in the major key and uh and they do form a sequence but the partitas certainly first one b flat you know [Music] second one a minor and then sec the fourth one starts with the french overture d and then and finally so for me again buck never thought of this as a that somebody would be as crazy as means to play the six-part hitters in a concert and then i did and and i was always very uncomfortable starting the concert just a very delicate piece very difficult to the audience is not ready and i am not ready and then i thought why do i have to start with this no there is no law for that and so i said let's start with because this is the first one i played when i was a kid as i feel very comfortable with this it's a very and then if you stay if you take g major g major a minor b flat major c minor d major and e minor so you have a an ascending hexa quad and so that that gives me a logical arch but this is just just an interpretation however whenever one has to think of such such questions and answers well we're almost out of time and i wondered if we might take just a couple of questions if there were any questions from the people here yes oops okay i want to know if since bob was so so religious um does numerology ever figure into his to his work like you look at his things do you think about is he thinking three notes is he thinking six notes seven notes those you know numbers that have something to do with spirituality or religion do you ever put this music that way certainly and not not just that but he was interested in the kabbalah and the numerology and it's very very important if you take i mean there are certain theories and i think it's interesting that if you take certain notes and give them numbers uh like the letter c letter c is the third in the alphabet so it's a b it's not it's three then d is four yes or you have also his own name which is beyatseha [Music] be natural of course in english but in german it's it's age so it's it's the eighths letter so b is two a is one three is c and h is fourteen so you have fourteen as a key number and you take a theme like then add up all those notes and there are 14 notes and there are endless things like that you know you just add them up 1 2 3 4 5 6 8 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 yeah but you don't think of it because you're just here [Music] it's it's interesting but and there are endless you know who little tricks there and and and um most of them are are really not not not coincidental i think that the numbers were very important to bach no question okay we had one other hand raised and i think that will finish that might finish us off between book one and book two of the world center yes as i said to me the most important is that in book two the preludes are gigantic a lot of them are in binary form two parts both repeated so so it's just just incredibly much more much more complex and much more rich as for the fugues uh it's difficult to say because in book one you have two five-part fugues the c-sharp minor and the b b flat minor in book two there are no five part fugues so already that is very complex and if if you take the the b minor fugue of of book one if if anything it's it's much more complex than than b minor of book two but then i think if i could put it in words the the difference is like the like comparing the saint john passion with the saint matthew passion uh two passions and again about 20 years apart so i would say that the first one is a is a steward drunk piece from the middle period and the second one is a is a very mature masterpiece from from the late period that does not say which one is which one is greater they are both both fantastic with the passions and also with them well tempered clavier lady wanted to ask something and okay thanks concerning the intention of a composer what do you think are his intentions for the players that come after him and that play his music and also what do you think are the expectations of the audience what does want people to feel when his music is played maybe it's an impossible question but i'm sure that we thought about it [Music] what bach expected of his performers well first of all he was perfectly able to to play it himself therefore he gave us very few instructions he and his children and his pupils and this this was a very narrow circle however they knew exactly what he meant so it was not necessary to to give too many instructions i think he would be highly surprised that that we are playing his music today he was not writing for eternity as as a deeply religious person he said you know yes i'm god gave me talent and it's my duty to to write i have to serve my community i have to write a cantata for every sunday as as well as i can eternity or you know the individual that's why i find bach so incredibly great that that this ego that we find with later composers and performers today my god the ego is gigantic with bach there is no ego the the letter i i as a person you know ego it doesn't exist it's it's it's we it's the community so that's very important and also audiences and concerts you know there were no concerts those days this is at this siemens cafe he played maybe the brandenburg concerto for a few dozen of people that's it so he would be really surprised but he would be pleased i think and he would he would hope that that this message comes across the message is very important and that's that i find very often that even in in this very noisy world we live in but in a in a good concert when when bach is performed and listened to then we have this feeling of a of a community and that's why it's important to to have live concerts because you cannot do this alone in in your living room it's wonderful to listen to it at home and let's let's do it but to go together and and listen to this and also to to concentrate to focus that's very important bach is not easy listening you cannot have popcorn and coke and and and you really have to and that is that is a problem today because people are no longer able to sit still and concentrate i mean i have had some unbelievable noisy audiences last week here it was like being in the middle of grand central station all right there were a lot of kids but i don't blame the kids but what about the adults they cannot sit still because it's this this television computer audience and you you you press a button and you change the channel and and so for that bach is is a great great experience and great educator but by all means it should not be like a police state one should come to a concert by one's free will and and have a wonderful time really but listen you know alfred brendel's made this beautiful anagram that listen and silent are the anagrams of each other same letters this this is also very baking he would have used it had he spoken english so we have to listen in silence and then it also it also helps us the performers because it's very difficult to concentrate on on the complexity of of this you know you are you are leading a five part fugue and you you have five threads that run in their own direction independently you cut one of them it's finished the whole structure collapses so the audience can be very helpful or very distracting well thank you so much andres for this time and then thank all of you for coming thank you [Applause] you

Channel: Brutus Alwaysmind

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Id: RxK1hY6vHNk

Length: 83min 42sec (5022 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 10 2021