Jessica Duchen's Classical Music & Ballet Blog. Novelist/journalist JD writes for The Independent, London
Saturday, October 01, 2011
Saturday Bach: Richter plays Fantasia in C minor BWV906
This Saturday Bach thing is becoming a habit, but I could think of worse ones, so let's stick with it. Here is Richter. How do you like his performance?
Jessica Of the Richter Bach what can one say? Of course, it is note perfect, of course this is Richter, one of the 20th century's greatest pianists, but as you so well have put it - ' "Chacun à son gout" - ie, choose your own goo. ' So I say when Myra Hess, who I often heard play this Bach Fantasia, did the cross-hands passages with those delicious two-note phrases, they were absolutely delicious, they were gorgeous-the entire soul of music was in those two notes, and the emotion conveyed grew with each variant repetition of those two exquisite tones-it was not just a 'boom-boom' and 'ho-hum' but to each his own. At this stage in the development of 'world pianistics' I am hardly any more 'amazed' at such technical feats as some of the greats of the 20th century displayed...so I choose to remember this piece in the revelatory splendour of Dame Myra Hess as I heard her from my front row center seat in Carnegie Hall. A voice from antiquity. Wayne
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Jessica Of the Richter Bach what can one say? Of course, it is note perfect, of course this is Richter, one of the 20th century's greatest pianists, but as you so well have put it - ' "Chacun à son gout" - ie, choose your own goo. ' So I say when Myra Hess, who I often heard play this Bach Fantasia, did the cross-hands passages with those delicious two-note phrases, they were absolutely delicious, they were gorgeous-the entire soul of music was in those two notes, and the emotion conveyed grew with each variant repetition of those two exquisite tones-it was not just a 'boom-boom' and 'ho-hum' but to each his own. At this stage in the development of 'world pianistics' I am hardly any more 'amazed' at such technical feats as some of the greats of the 20th century displayed...so I choose to remember this piece in the revelatory splendour of Dame Myra Hess as I heard her from my front row center seat in Carnegie Hall.
A voice from antiquity.
Wayne
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