Prelude and fugue a-flat-major, WTC II, BWV 886

Hi Andras,

Nice work.

I just have one or two suggestions. Perhaps you should set a pattern regarding dynamics from the start of the Prelude, i.e. measure 1 is louder than measure 2, measure 3 is louder than measure 4 and so on wherever that pattern of a statement and a response occur. I hear measure 1 as a statement and measure 2 as a soft response that need to be approached as such. What do you think?

Sometimes I feel the theme in the left hand needs to be brought out more during the fugue .

Your tone is extremely beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

Kaila Rochell

 

Once again a noble, thoughtful and soothing interpretation. The prelude is perfect IMO, but I agree with Kaila that the voicing in the fugue, while entirely adequate, is not quite as good as we are used to from you. Some of the subject entries are not as legato as others, and in places the continuously running 16ths seem just a bit too insistent. The tempi are just right, making me wish I'd taken a bit more time for these too.

I spotted the trademark read error in the fugue At the beginning of bar 40 in the fugue you play a natural in the RH instead of A f lat. Alas that is not the only one. I in bar 46, the b natural in LH should be B flat (although the accidentals here seem a bit confusing), and in the chord with the fermata, you play e natural instead of E flat. Sorry

It seems to me (but I could be mistaken) that there is a difference in sound quality between the prelude and fugue. Were they recorded in the same way and during the same session ? The fugue, especially in the beginning, seems to sound a bit louder and sharper.

Shall I put these up or do you want to redo the fugue ? Necessary it's not, of course. It is very fine as it stands.

 

Oops, indeed. In fact I used to play this wrong for a long time, and maybe I'm still used to hearing it that way

Yes that should definitely be B-flat there. Quite unforgivable I am still not sure why there's a natural as well as a flat accidental written before that note.

Ok, this one is on the site. I've given you a separate "In progress" table like the one I have (you're only one pair behind me now :shock: ).
Please check if all is ok there.

 

Hi Andreas,

I had the chance to download and listen to your recording of this WTC piece by Bach. I enjoyed it very much, your phrasing and tempo felt right, not rushed at all. I think this is a great goal to record all of the pieces in both books and you are on the 2nd book, wow. Quite a challenging goal, I realize, but an accomplishment to be proud of and it is nice to hear the prelude and fugue in one recording as oppose to in two separate pieces.

I cannot give you much useful feedback about note-correctness but it looks like Chris has

Cheers

Riley

 

Hi Andreas,
I enjoyed your performances very much. For me your tempos were less than I would wish, but certainly acceptable. My approach to fugues is always one of voicing layers and functions, with emphasis always given to the subjects and trying to reproduce articulations and shape in every statement/answer. Thus I find both great esthetic and technical value in them. In this regard, I think more contrast could have been given to your fugue, but it is very satisfying nonetheless.

 

Piano sounds freshly tuned. The A Flat Major p and f, book 2, are a terrific combo and you succeed in both, notwithstanding the two wrong notes in the fugue and, it could be argued, the very slow (but I think successful) tempo adopted in the prelude. Measured playing, without hurry, and indeed without very much dependence on dynamics; yet it completely holds together, from beginning to end. That takes a precise conception of the "musical whole," as something more than the sum of its parts, which very few pianists can manage in Bach. (And I don't claim to be one of them.) I think it may be a kind of "gift," in other words, which is evidenced here in spades.

 

Hi Andreas,

I just listened to your prelude and fugue. Your rendition has a wonderful ebb and flow to it. Your playing is very refined indeed, so I thoroughly enjoyed listening.

As for dynamics, given that Bach's scores are nearly devoid of performance instructions including dynamic markings, it would seem that he left that up the to imagination of the performer. The clavier was quite soft and did not project well, and the earliest pianos that Bach played were very far from perfection. Like Beethoven who followed him, I think that Bach saw instruments as state of the art for the moment, but he knew they would be evolving. So he left it to the pianists of the future to make those determinations on more modern and capable pianos. Of course, we do have the Czerny edition covered with its plethora of markings, now mostly discredited. In contrast, visually Bach's scores really look like the very origin of the urtext. We should respect that and allow the individual artist to fill in the blanks to form an interpretation in good taste. That's my humble opinion.

Again, beautiful playing!

David

 

Hi Andreas,

Sorry for dredging up this thread. I started working on this fugue last week, so today I was running through the various YouTube interpretations and I came across yours. Overall I thought your interpretation was quite nice; I disagree with Chris that the 16ths are too 'insistent'; I happen to like them that way. I just listened to Angela Hewitt before you, and I thought her 16ths were rather understated, but then I learned the piece from Gould who is not a great contraster of voices, and I think those insistent 16ths are what made me fall in love with the piece. Also, congratulations on understating that RH Ab on beat 4 in m. 22; that's hard to do and Gould for one didn't bother to try.

Anyway, I know you have moved on, but in addition to the read errors Chris mentioned I thought I would point these out in case you return to the piece some day:

m. 24 - On beat 3 in the RH you play Eb in the soprano where it should be E natural. You seemed to realize it, though, when you got to the next beat. Maybe I'm imagining that, but I can't really hear you play the Eb (again) on beat 4.
m. 38 - On beat 3 in the RH alto you got to Fb flat too early; it should be an F natural there.

That's all. Sorry to drop in to nitpick; lord knows that's all I'm good for.

PS—I just noticed that there's an alternative version of this fugue. So I have deleted three of my notes which were accounted for in the alternate version. (After I listened to several versions including Richter who plays the alternate version, I realized that I must be missing something.)

Also, hi everyone!

 

Well Terez, that is a surprise ! I thought you had left us for good, having been lured away from PS by the social media like so many.
I was just going to write I did not agree with 3 of your 5 points when I saw you had already edited your post. I though you were not using Urtext like Andreas and I do. I never knew there was an alternative version of this fugue. If all that's different are these 3 things it's not hardly an "alternative version" is it ! Interestingly, an early and much shorter and simpler version of this fugue features in the Prelude and Fughetta BWV 901. Interesting to see how far Bach had developed when he re-used his material.

I should have pointed out the error in bar 24 as I used to play it wrong too and have now marked it in my score.

Kudos on picking up the one in bar 38 - that one got past me :x I've made a note as I am not sure that I have not always played it wrong too.

Heh, same here.

 

haha, not really. I just don't hang around because all I ever do is nitpick people's recordings, which is apparently annoying. I try to talk to you on Facebook sometimes but you always ignore me.

I just recently bought the Barenreiter WTC and haven't quite gotten used to it yet. I've been working on the 887 prelude for a few months now and all the alternatives are noted in the one version, so it didn't occur to me that there would be an alternative version of the 886 fugue lurking in the back. And that note was so small! (I also bought the Badura-Skoda Chopin etudes; I was starting to feel guilty for bugging Alf every time I had an urtext question.)

I did notice one other difference when listening, on the downbeat of m. 8 in the RH. The alternate version has octave Ab's while the main given version has Ab-Eb. But I wasn't sure I was hearing it right so I didn't mark it as an "error". I also noticed the difference in m. 6 but thought it was just a note that didn't come out. And I was trying to avoid being too nitpicky. :wink:

PS—In reference to your previous comments, I also played the fermata chord in 46 wrong (as a diminished chord) the first day or two I was working on it. But then I realized I didn't like the way it sounded, and it occurred to me that might partly be because it was different from the way I'd heard it. So I checked the score, and sure enough it was a read error. I was relieved. :lol:

 

I do no such thing ! Not that I know of anyway. I'm not a very active FB'er but do check in each day or so and would not ignore a request from someone I know. Maybe you use a feature I don't know about ? There's lots I don't know and understand about FB.

 

Hmm, the last one I recall, I tagged both you and Monica in a post about this video of the 847 prelude on organ. (Wanted to get your opinion on the concept, as opposed to the somewhat sloppy performance. Monica and I had a good conversation about the shoes, if I recall. :wink: Oh, and I found a guitar interpretation she liked.)

 

Oh, tagging, that is not quite 'trying to talk to'. So you wanted feedback on that video ! I remember seeing part of it and being disgusted. She's pretty enough but a theatre organist at best. No serious organist would take a harpsichord piece and turn it into organ mush.

 

I specifically sought out an organ recording of that piece because I wanted to hear what it sounded like. I like the sound; I just wasn't incredibly fond of the performance. (That was the only one I could find.) And Bach turned his harpsichord pieces into organ pieces all the time, didn't he? (If not mush.) From what I gather he transcribed things from instrument to instrument regularly. And now I have to apologize to Andreas for hijacking his thread. :lol:

 

I liked the fugue most. You have done a remarkable job finding your way inside all these dense musical windings.
As always your piano is finely tuned and has a clear-cut tone. Perfect for this material. Are you using any compression? If you are, I'd suggest you back down a bit because it makes the attacks in the mids somewhat harsh, an effect quite accented in the prelude.