Bach's Violin/Harpsichord sonatas

[ratsrcute]

Just a brief comment. I never grow tired of listening to Bach's violin/harpsichord sonatas, and to me, they contain everything that music can be. They are like a complete musical statement that contains all of music, and not even orchestral music has anything essential to add. I like the Leonhardt/Kuijken recording for its musicality, although unfortunately the sound is not the best. The Pinnock/Podger recording is pretty special too.

[josé echenique]

I got to know the works through the Kuijken/Leonhardt recording when I was a teen. Now the competition is formidable, with many outstanding recordings. For it´s Mediterranean warmth my favourite is the Fabio Biondi/Rinaldo Alessandrini version in OPUS111. Not dissimilar and also excellent is the Giuliano Carmignola/Andrea Marcon in Archiv. Newly converted to period instruments is the Russian Iron Maiden Viktoria Mullova, who recorded yet another excellent versions with Ottavio Dantone. And I haven´t forgotten the Reinhard Goebel, Francois Fernandez and Stefano Montanari versions. All marvelous, so it´s really up to a personal preference for one or other artist.

[jbuck919]

Just a brief comment. I never grow tired of listening to Bach's violin/harpsichord sonatas, and to me, they contain everything that music can be. They are like a complete musical statement that contains all of music, and not even orchestral music has anything essential to add.

IMO that's going a little far. It might be fair to say that many potentially interested listeners don't even know these pieces exist (even I stumbled on them by accident years ago after, heaven help me, hearing one on the radio), and don't know what they are missing. Ditto the sonatas for gamba and the authentic ones for flute.

[ratsrcute]

Just a brief comment. I never grow tired of listening to Bach's violin/harpsichord sonatas, and to me, they contain everything that music can be. They are like a complete musical statement that contains all of music, and not even orchestral music has anything essential to add.

IMO that's going a little far. It might be fair to say that many potentially interested listeners don't even know these pieces exist (even I stumbled on them by accident years ago after, heaven help me, hearing one on the radio), and don't know what they are missing. Ditto the sonatas for gamba and the authentic ones for flute.

Of course it's going too far! But it's how I feel -- at least during those moments when I am listening and really grooving on them.

[Len_Z]

Love these sonatas too, and here's my favorite recording:

[ratsrcute]

I am not fond of the Giuliano Carmignola/Andrea Marcon version (which I own) for two reasons:

- the recording is too wet. (too much hall-- something that could only be done artificially through mixing, because such small instruments don't fill a hall like that). This smears detail.

- they are a little too free. Their spontaneous alterations and additions leave a bad taste in my mouth. (I am extremely picky about Bach interpretation. Most leave a bad taste.)

I heard Mullova's version of the violin concertos and it has been too long to remember the details, but VERY bad taste is what I remember. Like "yank out this CD and stomp on it now" kind of bad taste.

Mike

PS. My personal motto is, you can only be old once, but you can always be a curmudgeon.

[barney]

grumiaux and jaccotet.

[premont]

Some recordings I enjoy:

Francois Fernandez / Benjamin Allard (Flora)

Florian Deuter / Philippe Grisvard (Eloquentia)

Lucy van Dael /Bob van Asperen (Naxos)

Mira Glodeanu/ Frederick Haas (Ambronay)

Florence Malgoire / Blandine Rannou (ZigZag)

Pablo Valetti / Celine Frisch (Alpha)

Ryo Terakado / Siebe Henstra (Denon)

John Holloway / David Moroney / (Virgin)

Luis Otavio Santos / Pieter-Jan Belder (Brilliant Classics)

Monica Huggett / Ton Koopman (Philips)

Elizabeth Blumenstock / John Butt (Harmonia Mundi)

Sigiswald Kuijken / Gustav Leonhardt (DHM)

And of course many others.

[ratsrcute]

Some recordings I enjoy:

Francois Fernandez / Benjamin Allard (Flora)

Florian Deuter / Philippe Grisvard (Eloquentia)

Lucy van Dael /Bob van Asperen (Naxos)

Mira Glodeanu/ Frederick Haas (Ambronay)

Florence Malgoire / Blandine Rannou (ZigZag)

Pablo Valetti / Celine Frisch (Alpha)

Ryo Terakado / Siebe Henstra (Denon)

John Holloway / David Moroney / (Virgin)

Luis Otavio Santos / Pieter-Jan Belder (Brilliant Classics)

Monica Huggett / Ton Koopman (Philips)

Elizabeth Blumenstock / John Butt (Harmonia Mundi)

Sigiswald Kuijken / Gustav Leonhardt (DHM)

And of course many others.

Thanks for the list. I will have to go through this.

[karlhenning]

Just a brief comment. I never grow tired of listening to Bach's violin/harpsichord sonatas, and to me, they contain everything that music can be. They are like a complete musical statement that contains all of music, and not even orchestral music has anything essential to add.

IMO that's going a little far. It might be fair to say that many potentially interested listeners don't even know these pieces exist (even I stumbled on them by accident years ago after, heaven help me, hearing one on the radio), and don't know what they are missing. Ditto the sonatas for gamba and the authentic ones for flute.

Of course, it is less surprising as a blind-spot on my part, but I only learnt of them when this 10-CD Leonhardt Plays Bach box came in (and what an improbably bargain that was). Love 'em.

Cheers,
~Karl

[John F]

Actually, I've known the sonata in E, BWV 1016, from an early age, because my parents had this recording by Yehudi Menuhin and Wanda Landowska:



I'm posting this for old times' sake; the performance is uneven and the recorded sound is very close-up and rather odd. For what it's worth.

[ratsrcute]

About the E major sonata, does anyone else agree that the first movement doesn't sound like authentic Bach? The violin's part is composed of rather pat elements that are not deployed consistently. It's noodling on dumbed-down ideas as far as I'm concerned. When the second movement begins, it's obvious that Bach is back.

[John F]

Perhaps because it's some of the first Bach I ever heard, I've never felt uncertain that it's by him. Bach's autograph manuscript of the sonatas survives, so that's not an issue. And while he made many transcriptions and adaptations of other composers' works, I'm not aware that he ever transcribed just one movement which he combined with three movements of his own. Does anyone have any information about this?

Incidentally, the finale sounds to me a lot like a concerto movement, and the style is that of the Brandenburg concertos - which isn't surprising as the sonatas were composed at the same time and place as the Brandenburgs.

[ratsrcute]

One hypothesis is that he recycled something he wrote much earlier. Whether the first movement of the E major sonata is by Bach, to me there is no doubt it is not consistent with Bach's mature style.

Speaking of the Brandenburgs, only 4 and 5 sound like Bach's most mature style to me. The others sound like they were written at a younger age. They are all very good, but there is a distinct difference. It seems plausible to me that Bach would recycle something he wrote earlier for a new purpose.

[jbuck919]

Speaking of the Brandenburgs, only 4 and 5 sound like Bach's most mature style to me. The others sound like they were written at a younger age. They are all very good, but there is a distinct difference. It seems plausible to me that Bach would recycle something he wrote earlier for a new purpose.

There may be something to the idea that material in the Brandenburgs is not all original to the time of their embodiment as a set, but I would not call any of them lacking in Bach's mature style as far as his apotheosis of the concerto grosso form is concerned. I would not mistake the miracle that we have six completely different compositions in the same general form that are all masterpieces (something that Vivaldi almost proved impossible) for some other kind of disparity.

If you want a work with a "distinct difference," turn to the B Minor Mass, where some numbers in the Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei were (rather hurriedly it would seem) borrowed from cantatas that are excellent but not at the same level as the originally composed portions of the work.

[ratsrcute]

I said they don't compare to Bach's "most" mature style, because obviously they are the work of a composer already a master. But, for instance, the passionate fugal passages in 4 and 5, and the general inspiration of the material, seem far above things like motoric material, repetition, homophonic passages, all the things I hear in 1-3 and 6 that just sound like Bach was still in a process of learning how to put it all together.

[John F]

I've always known (or thought I knew) that Bach didn't compose the Brandenburg Concertos one after the other in the space of, say, a few months. The Wikipedia article says, "Most likely, Bach composed the concertos over several years while Kapellmeister at Köthen, and possibly extending back to his employment at Weimar (1708–17)." Also, that they were "probably composed earlier" than 1721, the year in which Bach gave a presentation copy of the six works to the Margrave of Brandenburg.

Earlier versions of concertos 1, 2, 3, and 5 were copied in 1760 by one Christian Friedrich Penzel, versions which differ from the familiar ones that Bach wrote out in his dedication copy of the set. Earlier versions of 4 and 6 apparently survive from other sources. These were used in a Philips recording by the Adademy of St. Martin in the Fields led by Neville Marriner, with the once-famous musicologist, harpsichordist, and conductor Thurston Dart, who prepared the performing editions used in the recording and plays continuo and the solo in #5. The most immediately audible differences are the use of a corno da caccia instead of a trumpet in #2, sopranino recorders in #4 that play an octave higher than the usual soprano recorders, and a much shorter harpsichord cadenza in the first movement of #5 (for which 13 sources are mentioned).

From Philips's notes: "Heinrich Besseler, in his critical report for the Neue Bach Gesamtausgabe, concludes that the concertos were composed between 1718 and 1720, probably in the sequence of Nos. 6, 3, and 1 in 1718, No. 2 and the extra movements of No. 1 in 1719, and Nos. 4 and 5 in 1720. Thurston Dart believed that No. 6 originated earlier, probably in Weimar (1708-17) or even in Arnstadt (1703-7)." It was the usual thing to publish or dedicate works in collections of 6, as with Handel's concerti grossi op. 3 and the string quartets of Haydn and Mozart; perhaps, with five relatively new concertos on hand, Bach reached back for a suitable older work to complete the half dozen.

This mostly disagrees with ratsrcute's impression of stylistic differences because of significantly different stages of Bach's career, except perhaps regarding #6. Trying to figure out the dates of composition based on internal stylistic evidence is a trap for the unwary. Alfred Einstein, preparing the revised Köchel chronological catalog of Mozart's works, did a lot of it, and later research into the autographs' paper and handwriting proved him wrong, sometimes far wrong. For example, three piano sonatas that Einstein attributed to Paris in 1778 are on paper Mozart used in Salzburg in 1783, and several church music movements and fragments Einstein believed Mozart wrote in Salzburg in the 1770s before moving to Vienna are on paper he never used before 1787.

What this tells me is that a composer's style may not be uniformly consistent at a particular moment of his career. It's not just a matter of retrieving older music and passing it off as new, with or without revisions; any style in which he composed in the past remains available to him at any time in the future when he may want to use it, whether as a conscious decision (probably unlikely) or following his creative instinct.

[jbuck919]

I said they don't compare to Bach's "most" mature style, because obviously they are the work of a composer already a master. But, for instance, the passionate fugal passages in 4 and 5, and the general inspiration of the material, seem far above things like motoric material, repetition, homophonic passages, all the things I hear in 1-3 and 6 that just sound like Bach was still in a process of learning how to put it all together.

The passage I think you are thinking about in number 4 is canonic, not fugal . And the beginning of the Sixth Brandenburg is an even more impressive canon at the half-beat.

[premont]

Earlier versions of concertos 1, 2, 3, and 5 were copied in 1760 by one Christian Friedrich Penzel, versions which differ from the familiar ones that Bach wrote out in his dedication copy of the set. Earlier versions of 4 and 6 apparently survive from other sources. These were used in a Philips recording by the Adademy of St. Martin in the Fields led by Neville Marriner, with the once-famous musicologist, harpsichordist, and conductor Thurston Dart, who prepared the performing editions used in the recording and plays continuo and the solo in #5. The most immediately audible differences are the use of a corno da caccia instead of a trumpet in #2, sopranino recorders in #4 that play an octave higher than the usual soprano recorders, and a much shorter harpsichord cadenza in the first movement of #5 (for which 13 sources are mentioned).

Dart´s ideas were to some extent grasped out of the air.
The sopranino recorders in concerto no: 4 are pure conjecture - and the result even utterly unconvincing, as is the leaving out of the violoncello 3 part in concerto no:3.
The alternative corno da caccia solution (only mentioned in Penzel´s copy) may be caused by the fact, that the part is very difficult to play on natural trumpet. An emergency solution because the playing of the part on corno spoils the internal balance of the music.

Th. Dart only played harpsichord continuo in the complete concerto no: 3 and in the first movements of concertos no: 2 and 4.
Philip Ledger and Colin Tilney played harpsichord continuo in concerto no: 1,
Raymond Leppard played harpsichord continuo in the second and third movements of concertos no: 2 and 4,
George Malcolm played the harpsichord solo in concerto no: 5, and
Colin Tilney played organ continuo in concerto no: 6.

[John F]

Thanks!

[ratsrcute]

Yeah, it makes sense that any composer can be choosing (deliberately or not) to write in a certain style, perhaps an unusual one.

Kind of a related topic. I'm in a composition class right now, and we are writing in imitation of models. So the first month was spent writing a piece in imitation of Debussy, and now we are working on Bartok. Heaven forbid someone in the future think these are anything other than exercises!

[Marc]

Got my first 'touch' of these works with Josef Suk and Zuzana Ruzickova on a Supraphon vinyl recording, and immediately fell in love with these compositions.
Dunno if this particular issue was ever re-released on cd. There's an Erato set by the same instrumentalists which isn't the same (and less impressive).