I would imagine that several people who read my last post became curious about performance practice but weren't familiar with the interpretive styles I discussed. This post is for them and anyone else who might like to learn a bit more about the differences between Baroque and Romantic music.
If you haven't done so already, you should go to this website and download Spotify. It's absolutely free, it will give you access to millions of tracks, and it's the only way you'll be able to hear the recordings I'll discuss in this post.
Let's get started. Use Spotify to open this playlist. Its four tracks include two contrasting interpretations of a Bach prelude and fugue. After you've played the first two recordings and listened for differences, come back to the blog.
The first recording features Edwin Fischer playing Bach's 22nd prelude from the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier. Fischer was a Swiss pianist who lived mostly in the first half of the 20th century, and he plays in the Romantic style I mentioned last time. He coaxes delicate tones from his piano, which, depending on the mood of the listener, could sound either soothing or melancholy. He begins quietly but plays louder or softer to accentuate dramatic points in the music. If you listen carefully, you can hear the way certain tones seem to linger in the air when Fischer uses the sustain pedal.
Contrast Fischer's approach with Bob van Asperen's in the next track. Asperen is a Dutch harpsichordist who studied with Gustav Leonhardt, and his playing demonstrates the way many modern performers approach Baroque music. The timbre of the harpsichord gives the recording a different character from Fischer's. The brighter sonority of the harpsichord makes the repeated notes sound more persistent than reflective. The dynamic level remains constant throughout the piece because a performer can't use touch to make a harpsichord sound louder or softer. Finally, the notes die away when they are struck because the harpsichord has no sustain pedal.
I'll look at the next two tracks in my next post. Until then, leave me comments to let me know what other differences you hear in the pieces and which recording you prefer.
Thanks for posting, Neal. I enjoyed comparing the approaches of these two performers. Though I appreciated what Fischer was doing (a sort of "death of the author (composer)" reinterpretation of the written music), in the end I preferred the historical fidelity of van Asperen. The recordings also made me think about how technological developments influenced music - the romantic style could hardly have developed without the particular capabilities of the piano.
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