Here's a thread to talk about and share examples, not necessarily unpleasant ones, of tempo and or rhythm liberties taken in performances of not necessarily the music of Bach.

I'll begin with Bach, though. Here is Glenn Gould playing the Gavottes II and I da capo from the English Suite in G minor. Listen particularly to the end of the Gavotte II (ou Musette) for a reinterpretation such as I've never heard anywhere else.

Glenn takes a holiday

Is there any precedent for this shocking behavior?

Here is matter upon which the opinions of others would be interesting. It has long been known and understood that the Baroque notation "dotted-quaver/semiquaver" meant equally (according to context) the rhythms 3+1 (as literally notated) and 2+1 (as triplets). But the question is this: how long did this convention last, and what effect upon later music would (if it still persisted) it have upon our approach to some of the basic early-19th century repertoire?

As an example, here is a printed page of Chopin's Prelude no. 9...



...where it can be seen that the triplet quavers hardly ever coincide with the notated dotted rhythms (and when they do, it is because the editor has decided to make them do this rather than the composer).

Looking at Chopin's score, however, a rather different picture seems to emerge...



...Here the piece opens with all the notes carefully lined up (i.e. the semiquavers following the dotted notes are indicated as fitting the prevailing triplet rhythms). Furthermore, the composer clearly decided as the piece progressed to make a rhythmic development or change to this pattern by carefully crossing out the alignments, and making the semiquavers into demisemiquavers (to indicate that here they must NOT align as previously).

But this led me to think of other similar pieces! I remember all those years ago learning with my piano teacher Schumann's Scenes of Childhood, and struggling with the first movement because my teacher was never satisfied that I had accurately played the dotted-note melody as a genuine 4-against-3 rhythm with the triplet accompaniment! The question is should I have been doing, or did Schumann mean this little "kid's piece" to sound simple, and the dotted notes merely be read as triplets throughout?

A similar question arises - and this will be highly controversial I think! - with the first movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata. Should the dotted-note melody - after all - always have been played as triplets so as to match the prevailing rhythm of the accompaniment. Few would, of course, be bold enough to do that now (since everybody knows the piece so well that it would be assumed that presenting it this way would be totally "incompetent")!

What views on all this do others hold?

Baz

Not in every case; it may also have meant 7+1 in certain contexts and styles (at least according to our old friend Donald Tovey). If we look at his notes to the G minor Prelude in Book II of Bach's WTC (Prelude 16) we find this: "The dotted quavers throughout this piece are to be played as double-dotted (a notation unknown to Bach) in order that their complementary semi-quavers may conform to the prevailing rhythm by becoming demi-semi-quavers, as was always understood by Bach and Haendel in such cases."
 

As to be expected, Mr Grew provides the other possibility - over-dotting - that I did not mention within the context of my previous message. An even better example to support his case is that of the Bach D Major Fugue from Book 1. There - in my view - each and every case of the single-dotted figure needs to be rendered as 7+1 (even, indeed, when it coincides on occasions with straight semiquavers - as Gustav amply illustrates in his recording).

Baz

Much food for thought here... 

It seems to me that the presence of three different non-triplet rhythms makes the Chopin example without precedent. Does anyone here play the start of m. 8 as a strict 2:3 in the right hand? Seems that the E-flat ought to coincide with the 3rd triplet there, and dots should be pushed back a bit in the beat, and double dots even more so.

Perhaps "lift"s (or what Americans call elevators, though this is not an especially elevating byway here) used to go "fast"er in Chopin's day...

Seriously, though, I've now corrected my typo and apologise for having been insufficiently fastititititidious in my earlier attention to detail...

It seems to me that the presence of three different non-triplet rhythms makes the Chopin example without precedent. Does anyone here play the start of m. 8 as a strict 2:3 in the right hand? Seems that the E-flat ought to coincide with the 3rd triplet there, and dots should be pushed back a bit in the beat, and double dots even more so.
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But this is, we feel, yet another example of sheer slithiness that evades a focussing upon the main and overridingly salient issue! He never mentions what must be interpreted by those many passages wherein undifferentiated (as opposed to dotted) quavers are to be found. Are they also to be played with inequality (using a 2+1 rhythm against the prevailing triplets we wonder?). Merely pronouncing upon the meanings of the dotted notes does not explain how the UNdotted quavers should be played. And his mention of using "triplets against couplets" for these passages is, we feel, strongly in dissonance with his other proclamation that "There is often quite as much reason why the semiquaver after a dot should chime with the last semiquaver of the sextole". If the purpose of this style is to bring the multifarious rhythms into synchronisation, it is absurd, we feel, to allow some of them deliberately not to adhere to this performance principle.

Furthermore, we consider his views upon the "duplicity" of the time-signature (i.e. cut-C + 12/8 ) as reciprocally duplicitous. He should have known more about the history of Proportional Notation, and have been aware that combinations of this kind were quite normal in earlier days (as Bach himself knew, since he continued to use them!). So we cannot understand why he did not realise that the cut-C merely indicated the Tempo (which was, accordingly Alla breve - thereby making the pulse flow in Minims instead of Crotchets), while the extra symbol "12/8" merely indicated the manner in which these pulses were to be subdivided into the smaller units.

In short, he has attempted to SLITHE us into academic confusion!

"Keep it short and sweet" we cry!

Baz