Bach Goldberg Variations

eh I have only found the Aria for now

http://www.evulon.net/download.php?view.881 Start downloading this... bye 😉

Here is the correct address http://www.mutopiaproject.org/ 😆

Bach is always better studied on Henle or Barenreiter, which are urtext!

Vale wrote:

Bach is always better studied on Henle or Barenreiter, which are urtext!

I quote loudly!

Thanks guys!! I really didn't know about this "problem", in fact I was studying Bach from Curci and Pozzoli 🙁....ciaoo

No! NO! I also agree with Henle since I really can't read it on other editions anymore. On the Henle Bach, it seems seriously simple. Thanks to everyone.

Every mature performer should rely exclusively on original texts, perhaps those without fingerings. Only in this way is it possible to develop a truly "own" understanding and interpretation of the text that is not induced by some editor.

With this in mind, I often "make use of" the Petrucci music library (www.impls.org) which, especially for ancient and Baroque composers, including Bach, also has scans of manuscripts or first editions (for the Goldberg variations, you can find the first Nuremberg edition, Balthasar Schmid from 1741).

pestatasti wrote:

Every mature performer should rely exclusively on original texts, perhaps those without fingerings. Only in this way is it possible to develop a truly "own" understanding and interpretation of the text that is not induced by some editor.

Having said this, I often "browse" the Petrucci music library (www.impls.org) which, especially for ancient and Baroque composers, including Bach, also has scans of manuscripts or first editions (for the Goldberg variations, you can find the first Nuremberg edition, Balthasar Schmid from 1741).

I agree, perhaps to take a look at them, but if we have to rediscover fire for every search, we will never finish. Sometimes one must also trust publishers/editors to move forward...

TheSimon wrote:

I agree, maybe to take a look at it, but if we have to start from the discovery of fire for every search, we'll never finish. Sometimes you also have to trust editors/reviewers to move forward...

I disagree; executing what an editor writes could be equivalent to standardizing performances.... I hope to reach a point where I form my own idea of a work and propose my version, rather than the best performance of that revision.

It is a question of how much you want to play. Doing what you say requires a lot of time, so the repertoire will suffer...

I believe that often the right thing is the simplest one that the music itself suggests, aside from revision. Choosing to believe a reviser does not mean following everything they suggest to the letter...

TheSimon wrote:

It is a question of how much you want to play. Doing what you say requires a lot of time, so the repertoire will suffer...

I don't think studying the "Goldberg" variations on an urtext takes more time than on a revised edition (Curci, Ricordi, Breitkopf... they are everywhere and they all suck on average, speaking exclusively of the Bach repertoire). The notes are the same, and the only difference between a revised edition and an urtext is that the revised one inevitably proposes things that do not exist, rather than interpretations of the signs. These are two very different things. It may be that I started using the urtext as a child even for the Two-Part Inventions, but honestly, I cannot look at Bach scores with slurs, metronome markings, colors... it doesn't exist. That is a waste of time: reading those things and trying to understand how much of what a reviser has put there is legitimate and how much is not, but why should I do that?

I'll tell you a funny one; I've already told it and perhaps someone remembers it, but oh well... I was at the conservatory, maybe in my 4th year, and I played the Prelude and Fugue in E major from the Second Book for an exam. I was performing the fugue "alla breve," rather moving and energetic. After the exam, a classmate of mine came by, also a pianist, and said to me: "Your Bach is beautiful, but the fugue, damn! It's too fast like that! That fugue is an andante!". I replied to him that, unless Johann Sebastian himself had told him so, I didn't understand how he could make such a claim so certainly... The answer? The answer was that "Bach indicated precisely everything, even the metronome!". Stunned, I asked him which edition he used, and the next day he brought me his wonderful Ricordi edition and showed me the fugue in question. "Andante" was carved into the part, and in parentheses, the metronome marking... The difference between him and me was not only that I had never studied Bach on one of those pieces of junk and therefore knew well that any indication found there was not by Bach: the difference between him and me was that he would have supported it shortly thereafter and had no idea what I was trying to make him understand, because for him, Bach was just as Mugellini (or whoever) had "embellished" him.

Bach is studied using urtext and that's it

I agree with Vale, whom I greet. Bach indicated very few things, almost nothing. Editors indicate so many things, almost everything. Bach is studied on Urtex. Even the fingering is very subjective. I insist on mentioning the French suites performed by András Schiff, which I saw and listened to recently on Sky. Hands and fingers very free. Very pianistic. Pedaling that replaces the "constrictions" of the legato. Wonderful sound. An execution beautiful to watch and very intelligible, mainly in the "gesture" which seems to "explain" the wonderful "geometries". Perhaps not very "orthodox", but I liked it very much (Execution of the complete suites, I believe performed recently in Leipzig)

I am sharing the latest interventions, I only add that the Urtext editions also propose, in a simple, clear and "reliable" way, an interpretation of Bach's embellishments ("reliable" in quotes because rivers of words have always been spent on the subject).

As far as Shiff is concerned, there are things I like more and things I like less... I would vary my listening, certainly not missing Gould, who on the subject of this topic left us a couple of interesting recordings.

Of course Frank!!!! I agree. I own the two famous Gould recordings of the Goldberg Variations made many years apart. I would advise anyone who loves Bach to own them!! My reference to Shiff was only to emphasize a new way of rereading the great Author. It is clear that even for me, although I find his performances very interesting, I do not like everything about Him.

Why do you think an interpreter of Gould's stature would record the same work twice? ...and which work is it!?

I don't know if there are other interpreters who have proposed two versions of the same work... well?!

Paulo wrote:

Why do you think an interpreter of Gould's stature should record the same work twice?

... perhaps because, after years, he has matured a new idea; one hypothesis like another

Paulo wrote:

Why do you think an interpreter of Gould's stature should record the same work twice? ...and which work!?

A complex discussion, but at the beginning of this video, filmed simultaneously with the recording of the second 1981 version, Gould explains the reasons for his change of heart in extreme summary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B_2toF7m7E

Paulo wrote:

I don't know if there are other interpreters who have proposed two versions of the same work... hmm?!

Very many, actually. I'll name a few at random: Zimerman (two recordings of Chopin's Piano Concertos), Pollini (two complete sets of Beethoven's Concertos), Brendel (two recordings, the first complete, the second I don't think so, of Beethoven's Sonatas), Tureck (two recordings of the Goldberg, the first in 1957 right after Gould's release, the second in 2001); not to mention conductors: Karajan (four complete sets of Beethoven's Symphonies, plus two discographic versions of almost his entire repertoire), Abbado (two complete sets of Beethoven, two complete sets - the third in preparation - of Mahler). In short, there really is something for everyone...

Open content (youtube)

Carlos wrote:

not to mention the conductors: Karajan (four complete sets of Beethoven's Symphonies, plus two discographic versions of almost his entire repertoire)

...don't you find the 4 complete sets excessive?