mandryka
pfm Member
Its not a hi-fi thing for me, I have 15” Tannoys in huge Lockwood studio cabs, so very similar to say Decca’s studio system at the time of the legendary SXL recordings. My issue is a) a church organ, like a harpsichord, has no dynamic range (the keys are simple switches that don’t respond to velocity or touch), and b) the thing makes everything sound like religion!
I need to have another go with it though. I love Bach as a composer and he wrote a heck of a lot of stuff for this medium, so really I need to get beyond my preconceptions of the instrument and give it a better chance.
Clearly the harpsichord can’t make short phrases louder or quieter. But there are other ways that good harpsichordists attract the listener’s attention to a phrase of even an individual note - by hesitating for a microsecond, for example.
This makes harpsichord style very different from piano style. What doesn’t work well is to play early keyboard music on a harpsichord pianistically. Harpsichord style is much more about creating varieties of textures and expression through delicate rubato.
There are so many things a good organ has which no piano can touch! Gravitas, colour, depth. Some of the best baroque music is really only playable on two keyboards and a pedalboard. If you don’t learn to appreciate organ and harpsichord you’re effectively cutting yourself off from a lot of music, a lot of Bach and not just Bach.
I don’t know about making everything sound like religion, thak God I don’t have the God gene so I don’t notice such things!