Bach

Harold Bauer, Ignaz Friedman, Percy Grainger, Myra Hess, Harold Samuel

by David Dubal









Johann Sebastian Bach was born into the most prodigiously musical family of all time. Since the early sixteenth century the Bachs produced so many musicians that the very name became synonymous with the term musician. Albert Schweitzer said, "It appeared self-evident that one day a Bach must arise in whom all those other Bachs would live again forever and in whom the portion of German music incarnate in this family would find its fulfilment. Johann Sebastian Bach is, to use Kant's language, an historical postulate."

From the beginning of his career the keyboard was Bach's first love, playing the organ and harpsichord with equal fervor. It was as an organist that Bach carved his name and it was for the organ that from the age of nineteen he began composing. As a youth he had often listened to the renowned organist Georg Böhm who told him to hear his own teacher Johann Adam Reinken. Reinken at eighty still played with fire. Bach was impressed, and whenever possible made the thirty-mile trek from Lüneburg where he was a choirboy to Hamburg to listen to the old master who would live on to be ninety-nine. Reinken quickly appreciated the youngster's ability and was delighted by Bach's already prodigious improvisational skills.

At nineteen he took a rather important organ post at Arnstadt. Bach had never heard Dietrich Bextehude play the organ. The great musician was at the dusk of his career, and Bach asked his employers for a short leave to hear him at Lübeck. Realising there was much to learn from Buxtehude he once again asked his church for a leave. This time Bach stayed away for four months. Buxtehude too realised the young man's gifts, and would have him take over his post upon retirement, on condition that Bach would marry his daughter. He later offered his offspring to others, including Handel, who also refused her hand.

Unfortunately the Arnstadt church authorities were not sympathetic with their wayward organist who played with a passion and ferocity never before encountered. Members of the Arnstadt city council warned, "If Bach continues to play in this way, the organ will be ruined in two years, or most of the congregation will be deaf." His term at Arnstadt would be short-lived and in 1705 the twenty- year-old Bach became organist at Mühlhausen, holding the position until 1708 when he left for Weimar, where he became chamber musician and court organist.

The Weimar years brought Bach's genius for the organ to its fruition. Some however, considered the French organist Jean Louis Marchand, to be peerless. In 1717 both organists happened to be in Dresden and although they had not met or heard each other, a contest was arranged. On the morning of the appointed day of battle, so legend has it, the Frenchman heard Bach improvising and was so intimidated that he hurriedly left town.

Late in 1717, becoming unhappy with his situation at Weimar, Bach began looking elsewhere. His great organ period was over, but his celebrity as an organist continued all his life, and he became an advisor to the organ builder Gottfried Silbermann, who in his spare time made Germany's first pianos.

Bach's next position took him to Cöthen where he composed mostly instrumental music. At Cöthen he began his astounding series of harpsichord works, over the next five years composing the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, the Two- and Three-Part Inventions, the French and English Suites, and the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier. Bach found Cöthen congenial until his employer Prince Leopold, "my gracious prince who both loved and understood music and in whose service I hope to live out the rest of my days... grew rather lukewarm." The reason was his recent marriage to a frivolous Princess whom Bach saw as interfering with the court's musical life. For Bach the situation became intolerable and he looked for new employment, which he found as Cantor at Leipzig's St. Thomas Church, a position he held for twenty-seven years. Although his chief duty was the writing of church music he still produced keyboard works, including the second book of The Well-Tempered Clavier and the Goldberg Variations.

After Bach's death he was all but forgotten. There had been a drastic change in European music from Bach's practice of polyphony to a simpler homophonic music (melody with accompaniment). His own sons considered him to be hopelessly old-fashioned. Soon the princely harpsichord would be replaced by the emerging pianoforte.

A few connoisseurs and keyboard players knew a small portion of his work and in the second half of the eighteenth century several of his manuscripts such as The Well-Tempered Clavier were copied and circulated among discerning musicians. One such musician was Beethoven's excellent teacher Christian Gottlob Neefe who inculcated Beethoven with Bach's spirit. The first important mention of Beethoven's musical gifts appeared in a magazine of the time; "Louis van Beethoven, a child of eleven, plays the clavier very skilfully... he plays chiefly the Well-Tempered Clavier of Sebastian Bach... whoever knows this collection of Preludes and Fugues in all the keys - which might almost be called the non plus ultra of our art - will know what this means."

That was 1781; by 1801 Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier was published for the first time. Bach's slow resurrection had begun. Beethoven had passed his knowledge to Czerny who would bring out his own edition with phrasing, tempo and dynamic marks and, of course, his own fingering. The harpsichord was already forgotten and Bach on the piano sounded admirable indeed. To the next generation of Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Alkan, Henselt and Thalberg, Bach's music became indispensable. The young Mendelssohn played Bach's music to Goethe, who wrote, "It is as though eternal harmony were converging with itself, as it may have happened in God's bosom shortly before he created the world." Bach's ascension as a spiritual father figure to the Romantics had begun and was codified in Berlin in 1830 when Mendelssohn rescued from oblivion the St. Matthew Passion.

In Warsaw Chopin's teacher gave him Bach's Well-Tempered, and Chopin revered Bach along with Mozart more than any other. He loved explaining to his friend, the great painter Delacroix, Bach's logic, and if he had to give a concert he would prepare by practising only Bach. In Paris the mystique of the Well-Tempered Clavier was nourishing Charles Alkan, and in Vienna, Czerny's pupil Liszt pursued the entire Well-Tempered Clavier. For the young Robert Schumann Bach became his daily bread. He wrote it was "my joy and strength to work and live... Bach has a morally invigorating effect on one's entire being... nothing of him is half-done or morbid. Everything is written as if for eternity... Daily I confess to this lofty one." Naturally Schumann's enthusiasm caught fire in his future wife Clara Schumann who was at the forefront of bringing Bach to the modern concert stage. So it came to pass that Bach entered the charmed circle of the immortals. To play him was to give a benediction. Hans von Bülow even drew a biblical analogy between the Well-Tempered Clavier and the Old Testament, and extended this to include the Beethoven Sonatas as his New Testament.

Concerning a performance of Bach's Prelude and Fugue in C sharp minor, Wagner acknowledged, "I knew of course, very well what was to be expected of Liszt at the piano, but what I heard when he played this piece I had not anticipated, although I had studied Bach thoroughly. This experience showed me how slight is the value of study as compared with revelation."

In Russia the foundation for Bach playing was laid with Adolf von Henselt who practised Bach "religiously". Later in the century the most celebrated pianist of the age Anton Rubinstein continuously championed Bach's keyboard music writing, "If we take the Well-Tempered Clavier alone, the Fugues are of a religious, heroic, melancholy, majestic, lamenting, humorous, pastoral and dramatic character, alike in one thing only, their beauty! Add to these the Preludes whose charm, variety, perfection and splendour are all entrancing. That the same being who could write organ compositions of such astounding grandeur, could compose Gavottes, Bourrées, Gigues of such charmingly merry art, Sarabands so melancholy, little piano pieces of such witchery and simplicity, is scarcely to be believed."

As the nineteenth century concluded one other great figure Ferruccio Busoni brought the "Romantic" possibilities of Bach on the modern concert grand to its apogee in his monumental performances and in his transcriptions.

The nineteenth century never questioned the supremacy of the piano, and to think of Bach being played on the organ or clavichord was unthinkable, even unpalatable. The prevailing attitude was summed up by the pianist Edwin Hughes, a pupil of Leschetizky, when he wrote, "on account of the limitations of the harpsichord, Bach doubtless did what any other good musician had to do in playing it or composing for it; in his mind's ear he imagined the nuances that he was unable to reproduce on its keyboard, just as in playing the clavichord he doubtless let his fancy expand indefinitely the tiny-toned dynamic range of that charming instrument."

The nineteenth century was epitomised by the concept of "progress" and for any musician to prefer Bach's own obsolete instruments seemed almost absurd. But a change was to come as early as 1903. Wanda Landowska played her first public recital on the harpsichord, an instrument which she promoted with a vengeance. Years later she laughed when she told the story that Busoni had told her that her hands were not suited to the piano. "How could he know." She said, "that my hands were destined for the harpsichord." Fashion changes, for sure, but so does hearing and Madame Landowska began a revolution. Peter Yates wrote of her early recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations that it "was an event as decisive for the future, and the recovery of the past of music, as the first performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring or the conception of the Twelve-Tone Method."

With Landowska the dye was cast, and although pianists were loathe to give him up, by the 1930s there were many who felt Bach was not totally suited to the aesthetic of the modern piano. After completing twelve recitals of Bach in Berlin in the 1930s Claudio Arrau no longer played him in public saying, "Any shades of crescendo and diminuendo and other inflections which can only be achieved on a modern piano hinder Bach's meaning. These qualities of the piano creep into Bach whether you like it or not." Schnabel also curtailed his Bach, saying it was not fit for large halls, and soon even the once fashionable piano transcriptions of Bach organ works, by Liszt, Tausig, d'Albert, Busoni, Siloti and others were anathema to purists.

Ever since Landowska, pianist and harpsichord have lived uneasily together. As Landowska said to one pianist, "you play Bach your way, I will play him HIS way." Fortunately today we have Bach playing of immense stylistic variety, and pianists are losing their discomfort with Bach, many realising that if they are to play on the piano they must be fearless in their conception.

Indeed in no composer is there more room for creative interpretative freedom. As the century closes we can enjoy Leonhardt, Landowska, Kirkpatrick and Anthony Newman as well as Gould, Tureck, João Carlos Martins, Schiff and Weissenberg. Bach has been called "the Past, Present and Future of Music," and his work has never been more cherished than in the present.

On this disc we have particularly intriguing examples of Bach playing in transcription and original works played by pianists of the late Romantic era, Hess, Bauer and Samuel being transitional Bach players who were at the forefront of playing Bach's original music on the piano at a time when Bach organ transcriptions were particularly popular on the piano.

Bach was, for Myra Hess (1890-1965), her standard bearer. Each morning she began her work by playing Preludes and Fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier. (The Preludes and Fugues have begun the day of many musicians: Casals and Stravinsky made it a life long practice to play through a group on the piano each morning.) Hess gave credit to her renowned teacher Tobias Matthay who deepened Bach's impact on her. In her biography of Hess, Marian McKenna quotes from a 1931 interview that gives us an insight into Bach's importance for her: "One should begin to study Bach at an early age. I was brought up on Bach (before I was out of smocks.) As a student I often played for three hours at a stretch, going through most of the 48 Preludes and Fugues."

Although Myra Hess made a famous arrangement of Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring from the Cantata No. 147, she was a fierce proponent of playing Bach in the original, often opening a recital programme with three Preludes and Fugues. Reviewing a 1925 Hess recital Olin Downes reported, "An incident probably without precedent in the concert annals of this city occurred at the end of the recital - Miss Hess had played an encore... when someone in the hall called out "Bach". The name was taken up by many others in different parts of the auditorium until "Bach" could be heard from every part of the house... There are few more promising signs of the times, musically speaking, than the manner in which Bach is constantly gaining in the esteem of the public."

Ignaz Friedman (1882-1948) is well represented on the Grand Piano Series in collections as well as on a full disc representing Duo-Art performances of Chopin and Liszt (Nimbus NI 8805). He received a rigorous training as a child and his teacher Flora Grzwinska nurtured him on Bach; by the age of eight he was transposing Bach Fugues into different keys. As an adult he played Bach transcriptions, and the Tausig arrangement of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor electrified his audiences.

Friedman had a great international career, performing in three thousand concerts world wide. He composed more than one hundred piano pieces, among them such delightful vignettes as the Gärtner-Friedman Waltzes, which appear on The Polish Virtuoso (NI 8802). He was best known for his performances of Chopin and Liszt.

Harold Bauer (1873-1951) made many Duo-Art piano rolls, and he is represented on other releases in the Grand Piano Series, including his 1916 performance of the F-sharp minor Sonata of Schumann (NI 8804). Bauer was born near London, and his early career as a musician was as a violinist. Deciding he was not good enough to compete on the violin he changed to the piano which brought him early and continued fame, especially in the United States, where he also had a fine reputation as a chamber musician and teacher at the Manhatten School of Music. He was one the leading artists for the Aeolian Company's Duo-Art Reproducing Piano, and took great pains in the editing of the rolls. It is interesting to note that on this recording there is Bauer's arrangement of the chorale Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring, which is not as well-known as Myra Hess's version, but equally effective.

Percy Grainger (1882-1961), born in Melbourne, was well-grounded in Bach, but other than transcriptions he did not usually programme Bach in the original although he demanded his students to play the Well-Tempered Clavier. In a 1910 letter he reports in his characteristic style to a friend. "I'm practising Bach's Prelude and Fugue in C sharp minor (Book I) almost the solemnest and quietly upliftedest thing he got off..." Grainger liked the organ and once wrote, "The organ will yet prove a friend to me... never has more godlikely human music been born than by Bach. I still hope one day to be a good organist. The finger work is double as easy as on the piano keyboard, and the stopsetting is merely sound colour dreaming empowered with an Aladdin's Lamp; only the footwork needs graft."

It is not surprising that Grainger very often performed Bach-Busoni arrangements such as the Organ Prelude and Fugue in D major which Harold Bauer after hearing Grainger play it wrote to him saying, "I never heard the Bach Toccata played so magnificently." Grainger also frequently performed the Bach-Tausig Organ Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and Liszt's arrangement of the Organ Fantasia and Fugue in G minor which is represented on this disc.

Harold Samuel (1879-1937), born near London as were Hess and Bauer, studied at the Royal Academy of Music with the eminent scholar and pianist Edward Dannreuther and in composition with Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. At his London debut in 1898 he played Bach's Goldberg Variations, unknown at that time in London. To make a living he taught, did vocal coaching and became a sought-after accompanist. His solo career, however, was at a standstill until 1919 when he played an all Bach programme in London. He soon found a ready audience for large amounts of Bach's keyboard works in their original form.

Liszt once said, "There is music which comes of itself to us, and other music 'that requires us to come to it'." In the case of Bach, musicians came to him, but the public had taken much longer. For Bauer, Hess and Samuel it was the exact moment for the public to appreciate Bach in his original form, and Samuel often gave an all-Bach week consisting of six consecutive recitals, never repeating a work. It was said that he could play any Bach work from memory at any given moment. His Bach weeks made him famous and his success was duplicated in the United States, where he first played in 1924. On his recordings Samuel displays an impressive technique, swift and pliable with very clear cut interpretations. His Bach playing is stylistically less Romantic than that of Schnabel, Edwin Fischer or Landowska, who once chided Samuel for not playing Bach on the harpsichord. Samuel told her, "But Mme. Landowska, I don't like the harpsichord." Denis Hall wrote, "How modern his approach is to the music, the clarity of texture; the sense of rhythm, phrasing and rubato, the beautifully judged tempi and his highly individual use of dynamics. Samuel looked upon the clavichord's dynamic capabilities as an inherent part of the music, and it was therefore natural to transfer the interpretative qualities to the concert grand." Samuel became regarded as a Bach specialist, and resented the type-casting. He played a large repertoire from the Elizabethan composers to Brahms and Ravel as well as a few modern works. Howard Ferguson's Sonata from 1940 is dedicated to the memory of Samuel, who died too young at the age of fifty-seven.


© 1996 David Dubal

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