Bach is Difficult! A Live Q&A for Curious Pianists

Peter Golemme and here is the short video illustration mentioned above.

rebecca LAM If you have written out your fingering for the Prelude, I'd be happy to look at it.  Not sure I can help, but I can try.

rebecca LAM for WTC book 2 G major prelude,

1. can you give general recommendations on how to decide on articulation? I play staccato on most of the eighth notes.  Not sure if this is the right approach.
Here are the area in question: bar 13-16, bar 26,27, bar 33-36. 

2. When there is repeat in the piece, do you play differently the second time? And how do you suggest doing that?

rebecca LAM 

Hi there,

Thanks for the recommendation.  There are different approaches to the interpretation of both prelude and fugue depending on editions. For me staccato is too difficult. I follow henle.  (Maintaining pulsation and bringing voices is hard as it is in the tempo.)

Back to my query regarding pedalling in the fugue in bars stated is this a good option?

Begona

Begoña Hello Begoña FWIW, here is my opinion as a fellow struggling amateur pianist (assuming you are talking about the FUGUE, because you referred to it as the PRELUDE in your first post above!):

I would not use pedal on bars 13-15, because of the consecutive adjacent scale notes: the pedal will blur the harmony

M. 16, the pedal does not cause the above problem, but I would not find it necessary: only the first D and B in the RH need sustaining, and it seems easy enough (?) to hold them down for their duration.

mm. 26-27:  if I used pedal, I would change it every beat until the RH E. But again, I would not use pedal here.  It would cause those LH notes to sustain, whereas they are the successive notes of a single line, so I would want to keep them separate -- whether played legato or staccato -- rather than sustaining them so as to run into each other.

mm.33-36 -- same as above.  Also the adjacent scale tones would cause a clash if pedaled together except for in m. 35.

We used to be told (back in my day) never to use the pedal in the WTC, but a more modern view seems to be use it judiciously when it can help with your musical objective.  Dominic seems to agree with that and has said so in several of his videos regarding Bach.

The risk is that you don't want to over-rely on it to compensate for developing your technique.

I use the pedal frequently throughout the WTC, but generally only very lightly here and there to connect some notes in a legato line [notwithstanding Sir Andras Schiff's admonishment:  "Legato should be achieved with the hands, not the feet"]

In practicing, when focusing on developing my technique, I'll use ZERO pedaling to try to improve my legato skills, but when focusing on performing it, I'll use the pedal as stated above, to help get beyond the limitations of my technique in playing a legato line.

Having said all that, in this particular fugue, I would not be inclined to use pedal anywhere. You want the lines to be heard as separate lines. The Fugues in general are all about separate melodic lines combining, and too much pedal would blur them together.

As for tempo, I try to play this somewhat quickly, but not at the blistering pace you hear on some records. Around MM 112 per eight note, and once comfortable there,  I might perhaps try to go up to 120. But much faster than that, I for one, can't play the ornaments, and will stumble on the 32nd notes.  Also I find the sequences quite beautiful, and they get lost if you just blitz through them. This piece is very beautiful even at very slow tempos.

Have fun with it. Once under your fingers, it is so much fun to play, you'll never want to stop!

Peter Golemme 

Yes the fugue. I will check these suggestions. Thanks