Bach and karl Richter

I found this while browsing Utube:

Rather brutal and yet very effective. What do you think?

 

My goodness, when was that made? I saw Richter conduct the Bach Weihnachsoratorium in the Kongresssaal of the Deutsches Museum, Munich at Christmas 1975 and he looked older than that then!

Sounds fine to me, but then I'm no harpsichordist and I have nothing with which to compare it. Has it gone out of style, the way his choral Bach has? Richter was undoubtedly a great Bachian, but his choral stuff was often Bach for elephants, which was the style those days. (I hated the way he prolonged the notes at the end of the chorale lines for dramatic effect).

 

Yes, it has gone out of style. For one thing, the harpsichord in which he plays (a Neupert Bachmodel, revoiced) is thought completely 'wrong'. While in terms of sound it is wrong, the main objection is that he uses a 16' (an octave below diapason). However, Bach did have a harpsichord with a 16' and it is very probable that he would endorse the low sound.

I think what most people would object to nowadays is that it sounds nothing like the more undulating post-Leonhardt renderings and the too frequent registration changes.

Richter's style consists in the opposition of blocks rather than in a musical flow. It is too structure-based for our times.

I agree that he often seems to have been watching elephants for aesthetic reasons and that it shows in his cantatas, and yet some of the very best renderings of some cantatas were made by him.

A very strange person, a very odd musician.

 

Which ones, Rodrigo? I have one double CD, which features some of the most famous ones - "Wachet auf" (BWV140), "Herz und Mund" (BWV147), "Kreuzstab" (BWV 50 something-or-other) - and while some were not too bad (some of his solo singers were among the best available at the time - Peter Schreier, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau), others were just sooooo ponderous. BWV140, which, with its gorgeous lilt, deserves a bright lively (but not too lively) performance, was particularly ponderous.

Gardiner's live versions of BWV 140 and 147 have yet to appear on SDG. My fingers are crossed that he doesn't make the tempi too fast. The need not to kill the trumpeter in 147 will help there.

 

Well, I was really thinking about Actus tragicus and Christ lag... I seem to remember there were very good performances besides those.

But the record from Richter that I like the most is his first Saint Matthews Passion. His Mass is also very good. I know I will be accused of romanticism, but, as I said in another post, I do not think it is romanticism at all: I just feel more at home with the kind of emotions that were prevalent in the 50ies than the ones that are fashionable nowadays.

As I no longer have a turntable it is difficult for me to refer to specific cantatas. But then, I listened to them a long time ago. If I listened to the records now I might be disappointed.

 

I know that Richter is no longer fashionable, but I love many of his Bach recordings nonetheless! His B-minor mass is probably my favourite of the many I have heard ... that piccolo trumpet just takes my breath away ... and there's a breathtaking feel of exhilirating acceleration to the Cum Sancto Spritu - absolutely marvellous ..... of course, having Janowitz and Schreier as vocal soloists doesn't hurt either! Here's a snapshot from the DVD I have ....



I also have his Brandenburgs on DVD .... in no. 2 that piccolo trumpet strikes again, big time.

 

Even if Richter is no longer fashionable in 'expert' circles (which are not expert at all) it is true that his performances are being released in DVD and in CD, whereas many other once fashionable performers are being left to sleep in archives.

As the public that buys Bach is hardly composed of a bunch of ignoramuses, I think the 'experts' ' opinion is mere prejudice.

The same happened with Kempff and Arrau, concerning Beethoven. Arrau was said to have a je ne sais quoi (I, myself, don't know what it was: I found him a little boring, but them I am not really a Beethoven fan). However, Kempff is still being released.

While I do not sustain the liberal opinion that the masses and the market define what is good, I again say that I would hardly suggest that Bach DVD and CD buyers are definable as 'masses' and 'market'.

There must be something in Richter that makes educated people like his performances.

 

On second thoughts, this again brings back the question I raised concerning Lautenbacher. Once the HIP hype is over, Bach is being liked once again in a somewhat more conventional approach.

I will not repeat the arguments, but I will say that Harnoncourt's and Leonhardt's (as a conductor) approach was severely skewed: it was good for people that rejected their parents approach to music, but, in terms of overall approach, it was too dependent on the kinds of emotion that the young adults and adolescents of the 70ies found fashionable.

To stir a little argument (this forum now needs it), I'll go as far as to say that Harnoncourt's approach was a pop one, designed to appeal to rockers.

 

A little wood into the fire: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2005/12/20/arts/20dvd_CA2.html

And

Sebastian Bach Superstar.

 

Funny, I always thought it was rather elitist. I remember the Telefunken publicity for the Das Alte Werke stuff when it first came out - it didn't quite say that this was the only correct approach to baroque, but it came close. This of course was nonsense - I have favourite baroque recordings that use modern instruments (e.g., my favourite Brandenburgs are by Nev and the ASMF). In my opinion, the best approach was Gardiner's - he went for baroque instruments, simply because he preferred their sound. As a result, he was intensely disliked by the purists of the time.

 

As I said, I was being provocative. By pop, designed to appeal to rockers, I mean that he tried to convince people that his hammered style was hammered not because it was ... well, hammered, but because that was the right way to play. (edited to add: I am still being provocative).

So rockers (as all my generation more or less is - we all listened to rock intensively even if we didn't quite like it, if anything because most other people listened to that kind of music) were given a clear message: you don't have to be corny and romantic as your parents are: now you can enjoy a beat and - hey! This is the right way to play it, the old fellows were quite wrong and were a bunch of ignoramuses (un mélange d'ignorance et de génialité: a blend of ignorance and talent: that is what I recall was written by Harnouncourt himself).

I don't recollect if I said all this in my post about Lautenbacher (and I'm getting old and tend to be tired in the evenings so excuse me if I don't check it), but this is one way of expressing it. Tongue in cheek only to a certain extent.

 

To me, Rodrigo, the interesting thing is how things have come full circle. At the beginning, the sound made by the Concentus Musicus Wien on Das Alte Werke was rather thin and scrawny. However, since then, the art of playing "original instruments" has come a long way and there has arisen a new generation of players who can make them sound good. I can remember a critic writing of Gardiner's B Minor Mass that, befoe this recording, there were original instrument B Minors and modern instrument B Minors, but now it simply didn't matter any more.

And to me that's spot-on - it doesn't matter any more. You can forget the whole hooey about original instruments. What pleases you more? Which captures the spirit and life of the music more, makes it a living, breathing thing, not merely a procession of notes on a page? This has nothing to do with the instruments used, but the musicians involved and what they do with them.

Going back to Karl Richter, the man was undoubtedly a great Bachian and worthy of our admiration. However, in the cantatas which I have heard (and I haven't heard the ones you mention), he seemed rather ponderous. To me, his contemporary Helmuth Rilling made a better fist of them. However, there will be folk who see it the other way round - and that is always a good thing. Long live musical diversity!

 

Yes, Richter could be ponderous at times - but then so could Rilling! (Though I've a soft spot for his B-minor mass.)

But just listen to Richter in the Cum Sancto of the B-minor mass - as thrilling an interpretation as any music I have ever heard! Gives me goose bumps every time.

 

It comes up cheap at the Musik Hug branch in Zürich main station every now and then, Jerry, so next time I shall avail myself of your advice.

Interestingly, I learned to love the B Minor with someone even more ponderous - Otto Klemperer. It is slow - very slow at times - yet it has a majesty about it. His Hosanna in excelsis, with the three clarino trumpets rising out of the orchestra, is also goosebump-raising. And what singers! Janet Baker for the Agnus Dei - I've never heard it sung better - and Hermann Prey.

I know opera singers are not "supposed" to be able to sing this stuff, but again my favourite version of the Weihnachtsoratorium Cantata 1 aria Grosser Herr und starker König is by Prey for Jochum in this:



I include this picture because I have the LPs and the box looks just like this!

 

Yes, a rather brutal, hammering sewing machine playing style on an instrument that's not very much to my liking.

I would not call it a HIP hype, I'd call it more of a musical revolution, caused by serious music scholars and lovers, and hyped by some fundamental followers of course.
But I doubt if the Karl Richter-style will ever come back in fashion. Although some brutal hammering rockers might want it to happen.

As was Richter's rather brutal, hammering sewing machine style on thunderous would-be harpsichords?

Well, Rodrigo, I'm being 'provocative', too, of course .... sure, Harnoncourt and Leonhardt studied all those 17th and 18th century sources to give the 20th century rockers a clear message: don't be corny and romantic as your parents!

Harnoncourt and Leonhardt first met in 1952, and they both were unhappy with the way baroque music was played. Harnoncourt played viola da gamba and violoncello, and Leonhardt harpsichord and organ. A lot of hammering rock instruments grouped together!
In 1953, Harnoncourt co-founded the period-instrument ensemble Concentus Musicus Wien, to play Bach (among others) in a way he believed was right. Was this Harnoncourt-design really meant to appeal rockers? Or was it a result of seriously studying old sources to try to reveal at least some historical meaning?
And maybe this studying led to this conclusion: don't play Bach as corny and romantic as ...... some others (I won't say Karl Richter, because I don't think his Bach is corny and romantic at all).

I sympathize with this.
For instance: I like listening to the 21th century Janine Jansen arrangments of Bach's Inventionen, for two and three string instruments, played on 'non-originals'.

 

A bit off-topic maybe, but not really, in a way:
During the celebrations of Mozart's birthday (2006) in his hometown Salzburg, violinist Julia Fischer played on Mozart's violin. Her comments afterwards: "During the first hour I couldn't play anything I wanted, because during the days of Mozart the violins were a lot shorter and I wasn't used to that".

Experiences like these make some musicians and performers, who like their brains to work, think. Wouldn't you agree?
And I believe they don't think to be provocative, or to please rockers, but just to try to understand how 18th century music might be played.
I think that Leonhardt and Harnoncourt already 'discovered' the 'unknown' or 'secret' differences of the 18th century string instruments half a century ago. And I also think that these 'secrets' were already known lots of decades before that.
Ofcourse, on a 'modern' violin one has to adapt one's playing style to the instrument one's playing. Nevertheless, this 'new' 2006 experience might have (had) some influence on the playing of an intelligent musician like Julia Fischer.
To me personally, I still like various ways of 'interpretations', but I also think that thinking and reconsidering your visions aren't bad things whilst trying to be a honest musician.

 

Dear all:

Thank you for your comments to my fiery post. I will answer them during the weekend - I'm rather busy this week, but I will answer.

Let me just add that if I was being provocative, the feeling behind the comments was totally true: I think there was a HIP hype. I will only add now that it was very poorly HIstorically researched. Another log to the fire.

Please bear with me: I will answer.

 

Hey, Rodrigo, relax and take your time.
I just wanted you to know that if you are trying to say: there has been a HIP hype, I would not dare to deny that. Because almost everything in this world, caused or created by men, is hyped. I mean, even Jesus Christ is hyped. But was he meant to be a hype?
If you're trying to prove that the HIP-concept in itself was a hype, f.i. only meant to please rockers, then I deny that. But that's nothing new, isn't it?

A short story of what I remember:
What kind of people did go to HIP-concerts in the 'early' years? I don't know about the audience in Southern Europe, but around here one could almost drown in the beards, glasses, sandals, woolly sweaters and dungarees. Only boys and girls (and some greys, who couldn't hear the difference between HIP and non-HIP anyway ), who watched and listened to those real wooden oboes with tears in their eyes.
Yeah, a lot of rock 'n' roll going on around there!

:boogie:

 

HIP hype

No, I was being provocative (as I said) when I claimed the HIP movement was 'designed' to appeal to rockers. Of course it was not. But it presented itself as a kind of major revolution to a revolution hungry crowd, and this coincidence bores me. Harnoncourt said he was shaking the fundamentals of how to play baroque music through the accurate research of old texts.
Now I won't claim that Leonhardt and Harnoncourt read nothing at all: of course they tried to learn how music was played in the period. (I'll keep Leonhardt apart from this discussion: Harnoncourt is the one I criticize here).
However, and here lies the rub, this research was not done very thoroughly. From the start there were musicological problems. There are some papers (off hand I remember the American musicologist Marshall) that are very revealing about it: bad placement of accents and the very difficult to answer question of notes inégales are just too examples.
That said, Harnoncourt later reverted to a complete indifference to organological questions that I find quite baffling: he claimed that the instruments one played are not important as long as one plays them in the way instruments were played in the baroque period.
He might as well say that organological considerations do not matter as long as he is the conductor, because there is no way to know what was the spirit, the ethos, the 'air' (this comes often in Iberian treatises from the 17th Century), in which to play. That is, what we do not know is the overall approach to music.
But as many an instrument-maker has said, the only real cue we have, apart from a few comments by opinionated theoreticians, comes from the study of instruments.
During the 60ies and 70ies, old instruments were presented as new 'types'. They were the Steiners, the Dulkens and a lot of study went to the way to build a trumpet. Curiously enough, the HIP movement did not really mess with the organ. This was, perhaps, due to the fact that the organ literature and organ playing in general is a world of its own, but nevertheless it is incredible that, when questioning the overall approach to Bach's music, the organ was not investigated thoroughly. I'll come back to this.
Now I don't know about the Steiners, as I don't know how a violin is played. But the Dulken is an extremely odd harpsichord. Next came the Rubios. I love them (to the extent that I have one) but it must be said that they do not sound anything like their models. Then came the Mietkes. This is one of the most intriguing mysteries of the HIP. Would you believe that No One knows how they were strung? The original length of the strings is unknown; the metal used is unknown. Nowadays they are all built to a standard: they sound soft, rather week in the bass, and an impressive spread chord is not really effective.
Now I don't need to explain how playing an instrument influences one's approach. But questions like legato, cantabile, tempo, are all affected by the way the sound is produced and to a very great extent, to how the keys affect the sound and feel under one's fingers.
The organ is the best example I know of this. I haven't played any of the Bach organs. But I have played on many historical organs, and I may safely say that all the musical gestures that were promoted by the HIP leaders are difficult to perform in an old keyboard (that is why the first organ recordings by Leonhardt were mediocre). I'll give just one example. Koopman says that the chiff (the attack) of the pipes must be stressed. For this one must press the keys sharply and decisively. In an organ, it means you must concentrate all the force in the fingers, while maintaining a relaxed body posture if you want to play cantabile. I find this impossible. I once listened to Wilhem Wempff achieve this in Listz, but I think it is really the only case (and Brendel said it was almost a miracle). Organists are not taught to approach the keyboard in this way (indeed, they cannot do it when the feet are playing). Therefore, a true cantabile with chiffs is impossible in every tracker organ I ever played.
Why were chiffs important? Because there was a move from 'roundness' to 'sharpness', and this 'sharpness' was considered baroque. Now how on earth may any one even superficially acquainted with baroque art claim that sharpness is a characteristic of baroque? One cannot. Gothic art was sharp (van Eyck, and all the rest, the spires and so on). But baroque is curvaceous, linear, tension laden and sometimes surprising, but never sharp.
So where did this 'sharpness' come from? Obviously, from the 50ies and 60ies. A new generation tried to assert itself from the old days: the dull grey suits, the dark cars. It is not, I think, a coincidence that from the 60ies everybody began to talk geometrically: this was very obvious in Continental Europe. Sentences like: 'in the framework of the structure of the problems inherent to the general determinants of...' were very common. This is muddy, but sharp, because words like structure and framework, reminds us of wire, of metal and glass, and convey a general idea of sharpness.
This sharpness is evident in Harnoncourt in the stressing of the beats and in the tempi he adopted. His Vivaldi his perhaps the most evident 'completely wrong' approach I have ever heard. His Passions, good as they are (he is a good musician) smack of 20th Century search for an impossible to find sense of being. His Suites and Brandenburgs are just rather brisk and hurried renderings of Court-like music.
All this is OK as far as you do not try to sell it as authentic. It is not OK when you claim to have the key to how to perform Bach, and call other musicians ignoramuses. This 'dirty move' is even more blatant when you consider that Harnoncourt did not know a lot himself.

Leonhardt is a quite different musician. He seems a deep introvert (I think: but were I blessed with his virtuosity I would never have played Bach in Jean Marie Straub's film) and he sought the inspiration in quite another field. I personally find his playing (chiefly in the early 60ies) extremely sensual. Indeed, it is almost sexual (you can confirm that in his recording of the adagio variation of the Goldbergs in Straub's film). I don't mean he understood that would captivate youngsters, but I really think that this sensuousness is one of the main reasons of his success. I quite well remember almost everybody I talked about Leonhardt at that time (in Portugal, France and Belgium) freely admiting the almost ostensible sensuality of his playing. 'Night time delights' a friend of mine commented ('Délices nocturnes'). Now I have nothing against that – there were many such cases, Couperin being perhaps the better known at it, but even Bach's uncles wrote in this spirit, and some Bach arias are unequivocal in that respect). What I mean to say is that Leonhardt was the right man at the right place.
At another level, Leonhardt's main claim to fame was to use spectacular instruments played sensuously. His Vanguard records are horrible (ONE , two,three-four) and we can see why it doesn't work in the last (in the published version) canon of the canonic variations (compare it to the flow of Walcha, for instance, and indeed of almost every professional organist of the time). When he began to play true harpsichords he understood the absolute beauty of the sound and modified his playing accordingly; but there was no such possibility in the organ and his early recordings were not liked.

So what I am saying is the the HIP movement was not all the HI, and that its success was due to a happy coincidence: young people (yes, beards, sandals, long hairs, and all) were trying to find a new identity; rock was too simple and stupid (after all to be an intellectual was the thing) and Bach, revisited, moreover seen from an 'intellectual' light that made their elders to look stupid, was the very thing they needed.
Eh bien, Voila. You may not agree, but I have stated more or less what I meant by HIP hype.

P.S. Just to add that if the HIP movement was truly HI, the most probable harpsichord to play Bach has a 16 foot and an 8 foot in the lower manual and an 8 and a 4 foot in the upper, plus a coupler. This has been known for a very long time. But all the research comes to nothing, and the pseudo-Mietke is used instead. May I add that the Neupert Richter plays has precisely that specification, although stringing is completely wrong?

 

I reread this, and I sound too serious. Well, I am serious, but not as in my avatar (the second one, resembling Ralph Kirkpatrick!). So I answered in earnest, but not earnestly. To prove it:

Now shoot at me::rds2::gatling::clint:

(I just love the smilies!)