I won’t say that I’m NOT a fan of Baroque music, but I will say that it’s not my “go to” when I listen to classical music. LOL – my wife always calls it “George Washington music,” and she pictures people dancing minuets or gavottes in their colonial garb and colonial slipper shoes. When a Baroque tune plays on the radio, she demonstrates the dancing with two of her fingers and asks me to “turn off that George Washington music.” She’s not a fan of the Baroque period at all.
Well, just prior to this week I saw a photograph on Instagram of four grand pianos jammed together on a stage along with a small chamber orchestra. The caption said something about the Bach Concerto for Four Pianos. Say what? Four pianos? Sounded interesting to me, so I chose it as my piece to listen to this week – though I’ll admit, I listened when my wife wasn’t home. LOL. In a nutshell: I loved it! It was about as Bach as Bach could be with his counterpoint, his harmonizations, his rhythms, form and textures, and his motivic development. Hmm, I will say, though, that I’m not so sure that Bach even wrote the piece. It seems from some (limited) research that Bach transcribed music by Vivaldi? Plus, the original transcription was for four harpsichords, not four pianos, so I listened to the piece with both instrumentations, four pianos and four harpsichords. I enjoyed both (as a matter of fact, I think the second movement worked better with the harpsichords). Here’s info on the concerto from an article on Wikipedia (HERE): “Bach made a number of transcriptions of Antonio Vivaldi's concertos, especially from his Op. 3 set, entitled L'estro armonico. Bach adapted them for solo harpsichord and solo organ, but for the Concerto for 4 violins in B minor, Op. 3 No. 10, RV 580, he decided upon the unique solution of using four harpsichords and orchestra. This is thus the only orchestral harpsichord concerto by Bach which was not an adaptation of his own material.” By the way, an article on Vivaldi’s L'estro armonico (which, of course, discusses Bach's transcription) is HERE. The concerto consists of three movements:
The first and third movements are certainly methodical, energetic, and bright. Think of Bach’s two- and three-part inventions on steroids. I currently have two friends in England at a reunion at Oxford, and I have to say that in looking at their Instagram pics, I can’t help but think of this concerto as the perfect soundtrack for their adventure. Think “Paper Chase” (for those old enough to know what I’m talking about). Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed this concerto – both on the pianos and with the harpsichords. Hmm…maybe this will inspire me to listen to more Bach, Vivaldi, and/or Baroque. I’ll just make sure my wife’s not around when I do. LOL.
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A New Hope:As the header above says, each week I will listen to a piece of classical music that I've never heard before, and then I will report out what I thought about it. Archives
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