Tonebase Bach Stage

This thread is dedicated to J.S. Bach keyboard music. We would like to renew the inspiring spirit of the old thread "Group-Journey through J.S. Bach" based on the inventions and extend to the entire Bach repertoire: inventions, preludes, fugues, toccatas, dances of the Suites and Partitas...

This is for everyone who wants to join!

We can enjoy Bach music together and motivate each other in the process of learning and practicing it!

 

"I begin every day with Bach - usually for about an hour. I used to torture myself with Czerny, which of course wasn't exactly stimulating for the mind. On the other hand, it teaches you the fingering for a B flat major scale, chromatic thirds, and so on. The daily grind of learning. Later, I discovered that I could get my 'training' under way better with Bach - a refreshment for the body, soul and spirit". (András Schiff, Music Comes Out of Silence, p. 21)

439 replies

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    • YMT
    • 3 mths ago
    • Reported - view

    I've been working on the Toccata in E minor (BWV 914) for a Bach Festival. Here is the recording I made:

      • Philosophy teacher and piano lover
      • Juan_Carlos
      • 3 mths ago
      • Reported - view

       Wonderful playing, Thurmond! Your playing has really matured over the past few years. It's amazing how you handle the difficulty and the sober expressivity required by this Bach piece. Thank you so much for sharing it with us, Bravo!!

      • Mom, fitness instructor, lover of music
      • Michelle_Russell
      • 2 mths ago
      • Reported - view

      Update: Thurmond was awarded a silver medal for his playing of this piece. He competed in the historically informed performance category, so was judged based on those criteria.

      • Philosophy teacher and piano lover
      • Juan_Carlos
      • 2 mths ago
      • Reported - view

       My most enthusiastic congratulations, Thurmond!! It was truly an extraordinary performance in the video, and I guess it was even better at the Bach Festival 👏👏.

      • Natalie_Peh
      • 2 mths ago
      • Reported - view

       beautiful playing! It was very interesting to listen to a historically informed performance of this piece! Congratulations on winning the competition!

      • YMT
      • 2 mths ago
      • Reported - view

        Thank you! The historically informed performance group was quite small, and my preference for playing Bach is in a more historically informed way - of course, the modern piano cannot duplicate how this would have sounded on the harpsichord, but many of the other elements (like tempo flexibility, rhetorical style) work quite well on our modern instrument.

      • Piano Player with Day Job (for now)
      • Peter_G
      • 6 days ago
      • Reported - view

       Thurmond, I think you are extremely gifted. It's been a privilege to watch you grow as a player and perform with such ever-increasing depth of emotion.  Like Sam Cooke, I "don't know much about history" but I know that 1+1 = 2 and I love this performance.  I agree with Juan Carlos' wonderfully apt phrase, "sober expressivity". This mood you convey here, of profoundly deep and continually evolving feeling (can't quite find the words for it) is something I'm constantly trying to capture in my WTC pieces with very limited success.  Here it seems to be flowing quite naturally out of the music, which conveys the impression of being extremely well-thought-out, yet spontaneous at the same time.

    • Philosophy teacher and piano lover
    • Juan_Carlos
    • 1 mth ago
    • Reported - view

    Variation Nº 18. It looks simple, but that's a typical misunderstanding. Glenn Gould described it as "a gem of balance and understatement". It's a canon at the sixth with perfect distribution of the voices, and that kind of flowing quality which is pure Bachian beauty.

      • Natalie_Peh
      • 4 wk ago
      • Reported - view

       bravo Juan Carlos!  That’s so beautiful and elegant! Thanks for sharing this with the group!

      • Philosophy teacher and piano lover
      • Juan_Carlos
      • 13 days ago
      • Reported - view

       Thanks, Natalie. I hadn't seen your message. How is your Bach going?

      • Piano Player with Day Job (for now)
      • Peter_G
      • 6 days ago
      • Reported - view

       JCO, thank you again for sharing your Goldberg journey with us. I've never studied this masterpiece closely. I've always felt that, like the Art of the Fugue, it is such a monument of absolute mastery of composition that I could never dare approach it as a player. Like the mythical (?) Mr. Goldberg I would play my Schiff recording late at night as I was falling asleep, enwrapped in the crystalline intricacy of its beauty as it washed over me.  Your performances of the individual variations are really helping me understand its construction. I love your performance here.  Honestly, I'm not sure I would have realized it was a canon had you not pointed it out (of course I could have looked at the score and seen that as well); but JSB here gives us a bass line that serves as a diversion and camoflage for the canon.  It's almost like the bass is the melody and the canon is the accompaniament.  But listening to  your performance with that foreknowledge, I can hear the canon, perfectly executed, a worthy performance of something so perfectly composed. 

      and I must say again, I'm so impressed with your memorization! I happen to know that you are participating in other TB forums & challenges and working on challenging repertoire from other eras. And yet each of these variations you are calmy playing from memory, without even an open music stand for a prop.  Are you going to go for all 30? I'm rooting for you to get all the way through it!

      • Philosophy teacher and piano lover
      • Juan_Carlos
      • 3 days ago
      • Reported - view

       Thank you very much for your kind words, Peter!

      Well, what can I say in response to your question? Of course, I wish I could learn the whole piece, but I'm afraid it's impossible (I always remember that funny sentence attributed to Mark Twain: They did it because they didn't know it was impossible...). But, you know, most of the time I tell myself that I'm going to learn as many variations as possible, without thinking about the whole set, without thinking about what it might take. I simply want to enjoy the process.  Because in this particular masterpiece -this monument, as you say-, if you take one variation at a time, it doesn't look so scary, and it's enormously gratifying. 

      So, of course, I encourage you to play them without rushing, and to enjoy them. In my daily practice, Bach always comes first, and the Goldberg Variations are the main work (nevertheless, I also play other Bach pieces; at the moment, for instance, I'd like to learn the Second Partita in C minor too).

      And regarding your question about memorization: I always try to identify and assimilate the learning process with the memorization process in every single piece I play. It's a habit I've developed over the last few years, and I think it's very helpful as a learning method. Besides, I feel that I play more freely when I put the score aside.

    • Piano Player with Day Job (for now)
    • Peter_G
    • 4 wk ago
    • Reported - view

    Hello everyone! I'm just checking in to let you know I'm still around and still working on the WTC.  I've been in a state of involuntary exile from Tonebase threads for much of the past 2 months, as one of my cases in my allegedly part time job managed to fill most of my days with urgencies & deadlines.  I see there are a lot of interesting new posts here that I can't wait to give a serious listen to.  I'll likely have some comments and feedback soon, and if things go well perhaps another Prelude & Fugue to post in the next few weeks.  In the meantime, best of holidays to everyone, and Keep practicing!

      • Natalie_Peh
      • 4 wk ago
      • Reported - view

       happy holidays, Peter! Looking forward to your next video! 

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