bach and keyboard instruments ❧ 123
than of some other more idiomatic composers, is itself a transcription, because
the work was never really quite written for keyboard in the sense that Couperin
or Scarlatti is. This is perhaps one of the reasons why there is so much lati-
tude in the kind of sound in which an interpretation of a piece of Bach can
be clothed, why there is such latitude possible in the transcriptions or inter-
pretations of Bach. And yet there is a point where some of us like to draw the
line. Some of us are not always happy with Bach on the piano, or the Bach of
certain Bach specialists on the piano. To some of us it seems out of proportion
or perverse. What are the central qualities that demand respect in the musi-
cal fabric of Bach? It has always seemed to me that a basic set of proportions
and structures underlies almost every Bach piece of music: the rhythmic struc-
ture, the phrase structure, the harmonic and tonal fl uctuations of intensity, the
inner nature of melodic confi gurations—all of these seem to me to command
a priori respect, like the grammar and pronunciation of any language may.
And yet, as I look back over forty years of playing Bach myself, I see I have,
unfortunately, a rather good memory for the way I did things when I no lon-
ger do them that way. I can see a large number of transgressions I would no
longer permit, transgressions against basic proportions of structure, and many
of these were induced by the aberrations of instruments I was using, by false
suggestions falsely taken up from instruments I was using. Almost any keyboard
instrument can put as many bad ideas into one’s ear as good ones.
The dominating motivation, which I and certainly some of my contempo-
raries felt, was the motivation to revive Bach that now no longer needs reviving,
but also the motivation to perform it as well as one could conceive, to perform
it in terms of performance and of interpretive insight that were comparable
with the best modern performances of the best modern pianists. It seems to
me that one simply could not settle for any level or any ideal level less than one
such as I considered set by a pianist like Gieseking who was, I think, one of my
fi rst stimulants as a Bach player.
Yet there is every reason to believe that Bach’s own demands for perfor-
mance of his works, whether by himself or by others, were exceedingly limited.
This is often the case, as one can observe in every period of composers. Their
imagination is so fertile that no stimulus is needed. In fact, they don’t need
performances because they hear everything already, they hear everything with-
out knowing that they are hearing it. The ambience may be so in tune that the
communication also is perfect. We know for a fact that this, of course, was not
true in Bach’s ambience. We know the objections with which the music of the
St. Matthew Passion was received by the congregation of the Thomaskirche. And
we can suspect that these objections extended to Bach’s keyboard music, or
would have, had it been widely known.
Yet the performer’s job or the commentator’s job or the literary critic’s job
or the museum director’s job is just this; making what is inherently in the work
Kirkpatrick.indd 123Kirkpatrick.indd 123 2/8/2017 9:58:08 AM 2 / 8 / 2017 9 : 58 : 08 AM
rick simeone
(Rick Simeone)
#1