Bach on the accordion

[ahinton]

It is interesting to think about how some music (Bach being the perfect example) is more "robust" than others.
(and avoiding the usual diversion into Feldman and Lucier etc)

It is indeed. I reall a conversation on this subject witgh Sorabji almost 40 years ago in which he asked if I'd heard a then recent broadcast of a Medtner piano sonata and I answered that I didn't. In then telling me how haplessly unrepresentative he thought it to be, he added that, because most people don't know the piece, they'll almost certainly blame the composer for the shortcomings. As it turned out, he knew the sonata very well and I'd also heard it before so neither of us would have been misled by this performance if it was really that bad, but I could see him point. Arising from that, a consideration of its bomb-proofness on a scale of 1 to 10 might suggest that Medtner was nothing like as high a scorer as Bach was (and that's in no sense a value judgement of the music, which would be quite a different matter).

Maybe this bomb-proofness or otherwise could be a topic for a separate discussion thread, although how one could write in such a way as to mitigate such problems is surely an unanswerable question...

[ahinton]

Oh, but I must insist - it can sound fantastic on modern piano!

I would imagine that there'd be a lot more compositions written for accordion. I'm certain that there'd be a gap in my CD shelves!

Correct on both counts! And not only that, Bach's keyboard works can be made to sound fantastic on a variety of fine modern pianos - Steinway, Fazioli, Stuart, Bösendorfer...

[MrGongGong]

Correct on both counts! And not only that, Bach's keyboard works can be made to sound fantastic on a variety of fine modern pianos - Steinway, Fazioli, Stuart, Bösendorfer...

As well as

[ahinton]

As well as

Indeed! - and this reminds me of a version of the self-same piece for solo double bass played by - I can't remember whom, but I think that it might have been Ludwig Streicher - years ago that was equally effective. Of course I can have no more idea than the rest of us as to what He might have thought about His music being played on modern pianos, or the best of the English Romantic large pipe organs genre Willis/Harrison, or the wonderful new wind instruments being manufactured by Heppelsheim or the Redgate/Howarth family of double reed instruments or whatever - but...

[ardcarp]

Stuart

Who he?

But whoever, count me among the adherents Bach (and Handel and Scarlatti) on the modern piano.

[ahinton]

Who he?

http://www.stuartandsons.com/