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JS Bach Saint Anne Prelude and Fugue.

George J

George J

Herefordshire member
This is one of those real baroque preludes and fugues that Bach made that more than nod back to Buxterhude.


The Bach tradition lives on in good health!

My favourite commercial recording is from Cappel Parish Church from Helmut Walcha from about 1952 on a period organ that was built for a church in Hamburg.

The tempi are the same and the modern Bridgewater Hall is no less fine than the Schnitke organ that Walcka chose to make his recording on. Both concentrate on clarity rather than sheer roaring power!

I could not find a YT of Walcha, so without the DG Arkiv CD it will not be easy to make a direct comparison.

Best wishes from George
 
George J said:
This is one of those real baroque preludes and fugues that Bach made that more than nod back to Buxterhude.


The Bach tradition lives on in good health!

My favourite commercial recording is from Cappel Parish Church from Helmut Walcha from about 1952 on a period organ that was built for a church in Hamburg.

The tempi are the same and the modern Bridgewater Hall is no less fine than the Schnitke organ that Walcka chose to make his recording on. Both concentrate on clarity rather than sheer roaring power!

I could not find a YT of Walcha, so without the DG Arkiv CD it will not be easy to make a direct comparison.

Best wishes from George
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Here’s Walcha at Alkmaar


He also recorded it in Leipzig, some people prefer it

 
The fugue is in my repertoire, but I have never learnt the prelude and that's ok as they're not really a pair. It's thought they might have been from different points in Bach's career or possibly from late on. In the latter case, he's writing a prelude in a "modern" style and it is as if, for the fugue, he said "that's ok...but this is how you really compose great music"!
 
Well CU3 is like that - some pieces in an antique style, others more up to date. That’s fairly typical for the big Bach anthologies. There’s a lot of galant music by JS Bach, I don’t think there’s any reason to think that he believed the old style was best.
 
alanbeeb said:
There is a wonderful orchestration of the St Anne by none other than Arnold Schoenberg...
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You have no idea how grateful that I am to have my attention drawn to this.
[No opinion expressed as I am just a musician].

Bach is my co-favourite composer with Haydn. [No opinion expressed about others who may be regarded as greater].

But the pleasure this has brought has made my day.

Thank you and best wishes from George
 
That orchestration... the Robert Craft performance in a CBS LP boxed set is my favourite by far. Probably available from an Oxfam shop near you! Most Baroque music needs a bit of help to stir me...

The Elgar arrangement of the Fantasia and Fugue in C minor, BWV537 as conducted by Boult, originally on ASD2970 - wow, just wow :)
 

That's the fugue from BWV 552 played by Daniel Chorzempa, who died last Saturday. It's a fitting piece to commemorate the man, because the interpretation is so bold, and, I think, distinctively Chorzempa-ish.
 
mandryka said:

That's the fugue from BWV 552 played by Daniel Chorzempa, who died last Saturday. It's a fitting piece to commemorate the man, because the interpretation is so bold, and, I think, distinctively Chorzempa-ish.
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I think it's bloody awful. The first section is ridiculously slow and the opening completely lacking in pulse. The middle section is (almost) equally turgid. Only the final part resembles an appropriate tempo but lacks flow nevertheless*

*All entirely my opinion, of course.
 
Nic Robinson said:
I think it's bloody awful. The first section is ridiculously slow and the opening completely lacking in pulse. The middle section is (almost) equally turgid. Only the final part resembles an appropriate tempo but lacks flow nevertheless*

*All entirely my opinion, of course.
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Well one person's awful is another person's bold!
 
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