On 23 Sep 2009 at 15:20, Kim Patrick Clow wrote: > There's a fascinating reading of the Bach Brandenburg 3rd from 1953 on > the DG-Archiv label with the Konzertgruppe der Schola Cantorum > Basiliensis Conducted by: August Wenzinge. I am not sure if these are > period instruments though. EMI Recordings has released some recordings > dating from the 1920s that are even more fascinating to hear. I think > in some peformances, a saxophone was used because trumpet players > couldn't handle the difficult part? BTW: I LOVE the font used on the > Archiv sleeve during this period, it reminds me a lot of Barenreiter's > elegant fonds used in their Urtext editions. > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxWjGjmSIWE&feature=related
As much as I feel honored to respect Wenzinger's contributions to the early music movement (as an Oberlin grad), I'm afraid this is more a "modernist" Bach peformance than what would later be found in the Early Music movement. The detached style of playing is very close to one of the most annoying aspects of conventional Baroque performance by players of modern instruments not trained in historically-informed performance, and that's the playing of all non-slurred/non-bowed notes portato. Just because a string of notes has no slurs or bowings over it doesn't mean all the notes should be played played an equal length, as seems to be the assumption operating in much of this recording (and in so many of the workaday Bach recordings on modern instruments up to the 80s, at least). You still hear it in professional pickup orchestras, too (I've listened on WNYC to recordings of Bach from Carnegie Hall where pickup orchestras or St. Luke's was playing and it drives me crazy; I also had to grit my teeth through it when I played continuo for a performance of Handel's Alcina at The California Music Festival back in 2004). It's so lacking in any subtlety, and, I think, reflects that positivistic view of Baroque style so popular in the postwar period. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
