Rodrigo, I think your contribution tells us more about you than about Bach, Lautenbacher or Harnoncourt.
I have the 2nd Lautenbacher set as well, and her Bach is definitely not mine. (Shit happens. :cry
To my ears, the recording sound is rather poor: harsh and shrill.
Her interpretation is indeed 'romantic', but I don't experience any spirituality at all.
Even Gidon Kremer's interpetation (to give just one example), who I think is sometimes very rude and overly intellectual, does have more appeal to me.
If someone would ask me: who is your favourite musician of the last decades? I probably would answer: Harnoncourt.
He converted me to the music of Bach.
On Palm Sunday 1980 I was 'home alone' and listened to the radio. The Johannes-Passion was broadcasted live, from the Concertgebouw, with Harnoncourt conducting. It's impossible to describe what happened to me after the first bars rolled into the living room, but I guess some people would call it a 'spiritual' experience. All I remember was that at first my stomach was touched, then my heart and head, then some perpiration left my entire body
, and after all that I felt lifted up and somehow floated around the room.
The rest of the performance I heard in some kind of a dazzled mood, and when my parents returned I told them that I liked the 'Johannes' more than the 'Matthäus', which I already had heard sometimes, because both my parents sang in a oratoria choir at the time and they took me to rehearsals or performances.
Do I always like Harnoncourt's performances of recordings? No, sometimes I think it's exaggerated or even ugly, but there's always something happening when he's the 'boss'. He's a man who keeps searching, and who isn't satisfied with 'solutions' that were valid for decades, even if these 'solutions' were his own. So I do not believe in a Harnoncourt dogma or propaganda at all. And I think he himself does not either.
About religiosity, spirituality or even mysticism ('mysticism' is a notion that I'm still not able to describe): I think these experiences are very personally related. To me, both Harnoncourt and Leonhardt are very spiritual, but maybe in a way that is not to everyone's liking.
Harnoncourt is a member of a very musical and religious (roman catholic) family. Religion and art have always been a vital part in his life. One of his younger brothers, Philipp, is a priest and I once read that he is a professor in Christian art, liturgy and hymnology at the University of Graz. I wouldn't surprise me if they exchange a lot of their mutual knowledge and feelings about music, art, history, religion and spirituality.
I also read some interviews with Harnoncourt about HIP, and he always states that he himself does not believe in 'authenticity' and he also believes that each period in music and art is romantic
and spiritual
in its own way, because every period has his own 'definitions' of this terminology.
If there has been any propaganda, I think it was spread by so-called imitators and followers, who made Harnoncourt's hypotheses to dogma's, and who condemned every other hypothesis as heresy.
This was the reason that 'HIP' turned into an almost radical religion, whilst the so-called founders like Harnoncourt never wanted it to be that way. Yes, Harnoncourt is religious, but not
a priest of his own 'propagandic' or 'dogmatic' religion. This religion does not exist at all, only in the head of the one-sided believers. As a reaction, the non-HIP lovers condemned the other party also, and called the HIP-believers a religious sect, with (for instance) mr. Harnoncourt as their high priest.
Unfair to Harnoncourt, I think.
I once read about the reactions of a lot of Concertgebouw Orchestra players, who were relieved to play Bach, Mozart and Beethoven in a totally different way. (Problem though: if Haitink wanted to do some Mozart or Beethoven, these orchestra members reacted as HIP-sect members, and convicted Haitink's interpretation. That's one of the reasons why Haitink left Amsterdam.)
He:His [=Harnoncourt] was a very abrupt style, very much in keeping with the political violence of the later part of the 20th Century. All the emotions that were cultivated by former musicians were reduced to 'briskness'. Tenderness, Boisterous Joy, Mysticism, Heroism (in random order) were totally 'off'. This may stem from rock and roll ââ'¬â€œ I don't really know ââ'¬â€œ or from modernism.
I hear briskness, tenderness, boisterous joy and heroism in Harnoncourt's performances. Mysticism I do not know that much about, but personally I do think that 'mysticism' is not audible at all. It's an experience, and I think it's impossible to describe such an experience. My 'Johannes-experience' as described above, is just a thin extract of what really happened. If one would call that a mystical expierence, then I'd have to say that there is also mysticism in H.'s performances.
Harnoncourt's opinions about 'ancient' music are not related to political violence, rock 'n' roll or modernism, IMHO. He was a cellist in the Wiener Symponiker and felt unhappy with the overly romantic interpretations of 17th and 18th century music. He tried to teach himself a lot about the practice of music playing in earlier centuries and formed the Concentus Musicus Wien. I think all this happened even before 1960.
BTW: compared to World War I & II, I think that the policial violence of the later part of the 20th century has been rather 'relaxed', in any case in (Western) Europe. Maybe we have to blame the musicians of those brutal first decades of the 20th century: to calm down all emotions, they dowsed all music with a late romantic sauce, no matter in which period all this music was composed. (Your guess is right: I'm happy with people like Harnoncourt.
.)
But the fact is that Harnoncourt's propaganda gave us a lesser Bach, sometimes very good, sometimes very poor.
I for instance do not agree with this at all, which means that this can't be a fact, only a personal opinion. I myself believe that this is the case with almost every 'statement' made about music.
When someone has to say or write something about music, it is an opinion.
Maybe only that's a fact......
I want to conclude with another personal opinion (yes!
): your own ears are the best guide and judge when listening to music. So, please, enjoy your Lautenbacher. I will enjoy my Kuijken, Matthews and Fernandez.
'Different' people have 'different' ears. Which means it's rather useless to condemn other people's personal likings. I believe that radical HIP-ers, who claim that it's only allowed to listen to HIP and that they like it because of historical prove, actually like those HIP-performances only because of personal preferences. If they did not know anything about music history, they would also have chosen for the HIP-performances.
When I was young myself (
granddad grows old), I listened to all various interpretations of Bach, and I liked the 'HIP'-interpretations the most, without any knowledge about musicology and/or history. And this preference hasn't changed until today. And I still have my own, personal spiritual experiences. Even with Harnoncourt.
