Today's Listening: March of the Scythians

This is pretty much the most heavy-metal piece for harpsichord, the Marche des Scythes by Pancrace Royer admirably executed by Jean Rondeau:

Today's Listening: Duphly

One of the charming traits of the clavecinistes was to title some pieces after other clavecinistes. Here is an example La Forqueray by Jacques Duphly.

 

Here is another one, this time by François Couperin:

Jean Rondeau slays some Scarlatti

 Holy $¿(R/ this is fast:

Ok, now I am officially a huge Jean Rondeau fan--because it was also really, really good!

I'm pretty sure that his hair is like that because to play like this you have to practice virtually every waking hour. I think that also explains the un-ironed shirt and why he often plays barefoot...

Jean Rondeau, harpsichord

Jean Rondeau is a young French harpsichord virtuoso and you can read about him here. I first heard him in a Bach concerto:

I have to say that this is the kind of classical musician that I really like: overflowing with musicality and technique but oblivious to obvious marketing, promotion and branding. I suspect that it is only in Europe that someone like this is allowed to pursue a successful career. Elsewhere they would not be allowed access to the better venues without falling into the hands of those middlemen that seen to turn every promising artist into a kind of cartoon. Mind you, M. Rondeau is a real virtuoso and that opens a lot of doors. He plays repertoire that others tend to avoid, such as the quirky virtuoso music of Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer (1705 - 1755), who composed this piece titled Le Vertigo:

Ah, well, that's as close to rock 'n roll as the harpsichord ever gets. For a more sober facet, here he is in a performance of the Goldberg Variations for the Netherlands Bach Society.

Like Scott Ross he has a powerful rhythmic sense, always under tight control. Apart from the occasional piece, he does not seem to have explored much Couperin. Here is Les barricades mystérieuses:

That clip is from a concert so you can see he doesn't get dressed up to perform in public. Hey, they're lucky he wore shoes! Speaking of no shoes, here he is playing Les Sauvages by Rameau in a non-concert setting:

How about a little Scarlatti? Here is the Sonata K. 481:

Well, I have a new favorite harpsichordist.

A Moment with Louis Couperin

I just stumbled across a lovely recording of suites by Louis Couperin (c. 1626 – 29 August 1661). This is Blandine Verlet and I think she is playing on a 1624 Ruckers.

The 17th and 18th century French music, that is, the music of the ancien regime, for some reason I find particularly elegant and expressive. It is both lively and melting, warm and piercing, and with a unique intimacy. I suspect the reasons for this might include that it was composed and performed for a small class of highly refined listeners, the nobility, who were great music lovers and strongly supported talented musicians. Yes, I'm sure there was a lot of competition, back-biting and so on. But it was all on the personal level, not at the industrial levels we have today.

You might find the tuning to be unfamiliar. I'm not sure of the exact temperament she is using, but it is certainly not equal temperament! There are a lot of possible choices, from meantone to Werckmeister III and I can't distinguish them offhand. I'm pretty sure it's not meantone as that would be a lot crunchier!

One thing I particularly like about this music is the rhythmic "feel" of it, the way it rolls over and wanders expressively. It is propulsive without ever having the lead-footed heaviness that seems to plague pop music.

What do you think of this music?

Retro Record Review #5: Bach, Goldberg Variations

This is an occasional, very occasional, recurring item where I review albums that might have been issued quite a while ago, but are still important. I haven't done one for nearly a year, so overdue. This one is prompted by the Guardian's Face the Music series where they get musicians to answer a series of questions--always the same questions--and call it an interview. Cheap to do, anyway. One of the questions is always "how many versions of the Goldberg Variations do you own?" The answers are always, well, less than interesting. The last answer, from a fairly young composer, was the Glenn Gould first recording from 1955. Yes, a stupendous debut. The Goldbergs were also the last recording he made before his death in 1982, so the two recordings are like bookends to his entire career. Along with Gould, I rather prefer the second recording. But citing either one is not too imaginative, now is it?

How many recordings of the Goldberg Variations do you own? Do you have a favourite?

Only one: the 1955 Glenn Gould recording of the Goldberg Variations. It is hard to listen to any other interpretation.

Hard to listen to any other interpretation if you have only been listening to Glenn Gould, I would imagine. So today I am going to review three different recordings (none by Glenn Gould) of the Goldberg Variations, published in 1741, during Bach's lifetime, unlike many of his compositions. The title page says quite clearly:

Clavier Ubung / bestehend / in einer ARIA / mit verschiedenen Verænderungen / vors Clavicimbal / mit 2 Manualen. / Denen Liebhabern zur Gemüths- / Ergetzung verfertiget von / Johann Sebastian Bach / Königl. Pohl. u. Churfl. Sæchs. Hoff- / Compositeur, Capellmeister, u. Directore / Chori Musici in Leipzig. / Nürnberg in Verlegung / Balthasar Schmids.

Which translates as:

Keyboard exercise, consisting of an ARIA with diverse variations for harpsichord with two manuals. Composed for connoisseurs, for the refreshment of their spirits, by Johann Sebastian Bach, composer for the royal court of Poland and the Electoral court of Saxony, Kapellmeister and Director of Choral Music in Leipzig. Nuremberg, Balthasar Schmid, publisher.

We are going to need the score, which you can download here. You can even get a facsimile of the first edition. Here is the Aria that the 30 variations are based on. We learn from Christoph Wolff's excellent book on Bach that the Aria is based on a ground bass used by Handel in his Chaconne avec 62 variations, published in 1733. Bach found this simple ground bass to have rich possibilities which the Goldberg Variations certainly demonstrate.

As this was written for the harpsichord, not the piano, I think I will just review some recordings of it on harpsichord, those by Gustav Leonhardt, Trevor Pinnock and Scott Ross. The oldest recording is that of Gustav Leonhardt recorded by Harmonio Mundi in 1978 (my copy came in this box set):

Every third variation is a canon and each one is at a steadily increasing interval. The first is at the unison, the second at the second and the third at the interval of a third. But as you can see, the second voice enters a third below the first, not above:

The canon at the 4th is not only a 4th below, but in inversion as well, meaning that all the intervals are inverted; where the dux (first voice) goes up, the comes (second voice) goes down and vice versa:

He reverses this in the second half with the comes above the dux. The canons continue expanding until the 27th variation at the interval of a 9th. Variation 26 has the very unusual time signature of 18/16 in the top voice with 3/4 in the bottom, which is the equivalent of notating the upper voice in sextuplets. And, of course, this reverses from time to time with the 3/4 above and the 18/16 below.

Leonhardt's performance is the shortest of the three, though not because of fast tempos. A lot of his tempos are a bit more relaxed than the other two. The reason for the shorter recording time is that he takes none of the repeats. If you do that, you can play the whole set in under 50 minutes: 47:19 in Leonhardt's recording. As this was made before the advent of the CD, I suppose it might be because it was very difficult to fit them all on a single LP with the repeats.

Moving on to Trevor Pinnock, his performance was recorded in Paris in 1980 and my copy came contained in this box set. The CD contains the Italian Concerto as well as the Goldbergs. The total duration of the Goldbergs, minus the Italian Concerto, is 60:53 in Pinnock's recording according to my calculation. Now, unless Pinnock is taking some really superhuman tempi, this is still not long enough. The reason is that, while Leonhardt takes none of the repeats, Pinnock just takes some of them. Neither half of the aria is repeated, but both halves of the first and second variations are, for example--but not the third variation, so what he repeats seems a bit random. They don't tell you what instruments are used, but the sound of Pinnock's harpsichord is a bit warmer than Leonhardt's and the recording ambiance is a bit more resonant. Some of Pinnock's tempi, such as for the gigue-like 7th variation, are brisker than Leonhardt's, but others, such as Variation 9, the canon at the 3rd, are slower. Incidentally, if you are looking at a recording of the variations in a store and wondering if the repeats are taken, if they are, the duration for most of the variations will be between 1:30 and 2 minute. If they are not taken, you will see timings under a minute. While Leonhardt's recording is not lacking in virtuosity, in some of the variations, such as #14 with its scampering 32nd notes Pinnock's is more striking in its brilliance:

This is even more evident in the very challenging 20th Variation with its high-velocity 32nd note triplets that Pinnock delivers with great aplomb:

The expressive heart of the Goldbergs is Variation 25, an adagio that journeys to some very strange places:

The last of the three recordings is that of Scott Ross, recorded in Ottawa in 1985.

This was reissued by Erato in 1997 and is still available. Ross' Aria is the most spritely of the three and many of his tempi are just a bit faster than the previous two players. His total duration for the variations is 69:31 which means that he is taking all the repeats. He has perhaps the greatest technical ease with the music and the interpretations verge on the insouciant at times, something you rarely hear in Bach. Occasionally you might prefer a slightly slower tempo as in Variation 13. But when it comes to ones like Variation 14, they really benefit from the energy. Perhaps a better word to describe Ross' Bach rather than insouciant is sprezzatura--as if you are playing with no effort, with complete ease. And so it is. This recording was made just after he had completed his recording, over eighteen months, of all 555 sonatas by Scarlatti. The recording includes a filler of the Scarlatti Sonata K 146. But wait, it's not a filler, it's an encore for we discover at the end of the Goldbergs that this is not a studio recording, but a concert recording, with audience. I don't know if they edited the performance afterward, something I know you can do and, if you do it immediately after the concert in the same hall, your edits will be unobtrusive as they will have the same acoustic ambience. But, this could be unedited, just like the recordings of Grigory Sokolov. In either case, a remarkable performance.

So, who do we prefer? All three of these recordings were made in a fairly brief period between 1978 and 1985 when the harpsichord, as part of the Early Music Movement, was really coming into its own. At this point harpsichordists were finally ready to take back the most virtuoso pieces in their repertoire, ones that had been "owned" for a long time by pianists. Indeed, in the notes to the Ross recording he makes some rather unkind remarks about Gould's Bach.

All three of these recordings are very fine, each preferable in their own way as each musician is a great artist. The Leonhardt is perhaps the most expansive, which sometimes is to be preferred. The Pinnock has moments of expressive depth and moments of virtuoso brilliance. And Scott Ross' performance has all the verve, rhythmic clarity and elegance that we would expect. None of these recordings disappoint in any way.

But perhaps none of them achieve quite the meditative interiority that Gould does in his second recording, especially in that opening Aria:

Domenico Scarlatti and the 555

We tend to think of all composers as each in their own way unique--every one a special snowflake. That view is strengthened by the tendency for the passage of time to winnow out all but the very strong creative voices. But even among this select group, there are certain similarities: most of the great composers were masters of most if not all of the important genres of the day. Take Mozart, for example. He was an absolute master of opera, the symphony, the string quartet and a host of smaller forms like the divertimento and piano sonata. In his day, the piano sonata was largely intended for amateurs to play at home. Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms and others follow this model. True, there are exceptions, but for the most part they are isolated to the opera. Great opera composers like Rossini, Bellini, Verdi and Wagner really composed little else. In the 19th century a new kind of specialist composer came along who composed largely for piano; among these are Liszt, Chopin and a host of others.

But there is one exception even among these exceptions: the Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti (1685 - 1757) is known only for his music for harpsichord. What makes that different from, say, Chopin? Chopin wrote in many very different genres for the piano. There were large forms like the sonata, medium ones like the ballade and scherzo and small ones like the mazurka and waltz. But Scarlatti, in his later years at least, wrote not only for the harpsichord alone, he also confined himself to one and one form only: sonatas, sometimes called essercizi or 'studies'. In his early years it appeared as though he would follow in the footsteps of his father, Alessandro Scarlatti, a well-known composer of opera seria. But in 1719 he became maestro di cappella at the cathedral of Lisbon where he also taught Maria Barbara, a gifted keyboard player and the crown princess. In 1728 she married Fernando, crown prince of Spain. Scarlatti followed her and spent his remaining years as a retainer in Madrid, free to compose whatever he wanted. His audience was really just two people: himself and Maria Barbara--oh, and whatever members of the court they chose to play for.

Driven by his own musical curiosity and imagination he ended up writing a prodigious five hundred and fifty-five sonatas. 555! They all fell into the basic form of the 18th century instrumental piece: two halves, each repeated. He called his method of composition "ingenious jesting with art" and it was really something quite new. These sonatas were quite unknown to the world at large until a selection was published in 1739. Indeed, you might say that Scarlatti's career as a composer did not really 'take off' until then. Scarlatti is something of a composer's composer and for much of the 19th century he was known only among keyboard cognoscenti. But in the 20th century he came into his own and his sonatas very frequently appear in piano, harpsichord and guitar recitals.

What makes the sonatas so interesting musically? They are often showy and virtuosic, and the way they use the basic two-part form shows amazing diversity, but the two elements that stand out are the harmonic flamboyance and the way they often invoke the colors of Spanish music--and by that I mean the flavor of the guitar.

Here is an example with some of that flavor. The sudden shifts from an A major chord to a G minor chord, with the Bb emphasized suggest Phrygian mode, common in flamenco, and the repeated clusters of D/E also suggest an open string of the guitar, sounding against changing harmony in the other voices. This is the Sonata, K. 105 (from the numbering of Ralph Kirkpatrick):

The rhythm of that sonata might even suggest the flamenco form of the polo. Sonatas could even suggest an aria as this one, often played on guitar:

 Leo Brouwer recorded an entire album of Scarlatti sonatas. Notice the delightful ornaments on the repeats. Another sonata that comes across wonderfully on guitar is K. 213, here in a dramatic performance by John Williams.

One of the most adventurous sonatas is K. 264 in E major which features harmonies a tritone away from the tonic and even requires changing from a key signature of four sharps to one of four flats for part of the score.

One of my favorites is the haunting and quirky K. 544. Here is Leo Brouwer again:

And for comparison, on fortepiano:

Finally, a rambunctious fast sonata to close with--and a favorite on piano, here is Ivo Pogorelich with K. 159:

Gustav Leonhardt

From Norm Lebrecht's blog today comes the news that the great harpsichordist and organist Gustav Leonhardt is retiring--at age 83!

Leonhardt is a towering figure in the Early Music movement that grew strongly starting in the 1950s and continues today. He is a spectacular harpsichordist and organist. I have to confess that I have never been a great admirer of the organ, but the harpsichord is a different story. The edginess of the sound takes some getting used to, but the clarity and the depth of the repertoire makes up for it. Here is Leonhardt playing the Goldberg Variations, one of the first pieces he made his name with in the 1950s:

He also made some wonderful recordings of Domenico Scarlatti. I think you can hear in this performance some of what makes him unique as a harpsichordist. There is an expressive intensity that one doesn't usually imagine the harpsichord capable of. After the jack plucks the string, there is really nothing more you can do, but he seems to be able to control the way the jack moves the string to get a kind of spring or crunchiness that intensifies the expression. Have a listen:

He also is known as a conductor both from the harpsichord and from the podium. Here is the big solo from the Fifth Brandenberg. I don't think that's his real hair:

And here he is conducting a Bach cantata. The three-hundred and some cantatas by Bach are probably the greatest collection of music that is not widely known to the musical public.

Here he is playing some Couperin:

Indeed, it is hard to find any music from the 16th to the 18th century that he was not master of, for harpsichord or organ, or ensembles including those instruments. Not long ago Sony released a box of his recordings in this edition of 14 discs, which I purchased and enjoy greatly, but which no longer seems to be available. However, there is this one, even bigger with 21 discs.

One of my favorite photos of a musician was one on the cover of a disc of Leonhardt playing Buxtehude. He was sitting at the harpsichord in a white room. The only other items in the room were wall to wall shelves of scores. Now that is a dedicated musician...