As far as I'm concerned, "historically correct" refers to the instrument you use, the music you play from (ideally facsimile of manuscript or an early edition, or "urtext" which clearly distinguishes between what is original and what is added), and some knowledge of certain interpretive conventions from the time (like fingerings, phrasing, dynamics, repeats, improvisation and ornaments).  That's it.  Within that framework you're a musician with your own voice and expression.  If you tend to be on the emotive side, people with a drier approach may think you're being "romantic."  People who use the word usually aren't thinking too hard about what it means historically.

There's also a problem with Bach, in that many people think he's on a plane of his own and therefore deserving of reverential treatment.  They extol the intellectual aspects of Bach's work, and the more "profound" kind of emotions, and are uncomfortable if a performer gets playful or passionate with the music.  Words like "romantic" are a useful way of dismissing a performer for being too emotional or irreverent with their musical god.

That being said, I don't know Rosalyn Turek's Goldbergs.  Maybe I'm doing critics a disservice and there really is something from the 19th century about her interpretation.  

Yes, but because those terms are now so strongly associated with various times in music history, describing someone's interpretation of Bach as "romantic" carries an implication (intended or not) that there's actually something wrong historically with that interpretation.  If you don't like your Bach to sound swooningly emotional, that's fine ( ) - but critics ought to avoid using words that make it sound as if a performer who might be working within an HIP framework is interpreting out-of-period.

I think that Bach is undeniably great. But I hardly think he's the greatest. There are very few pieces of his that I think are any better than some more interesting earlier composers (Biber, Buxtehude, Rosenmüller, Schütz). On the other hand, I can't think a work of Bach which is actually a donkey.

Bach is remarkable in that his best work (pieces such as the Goldbergs, the B minor mass, the Art of Fugue, etc) evinces the cosmic profundity of the human spirit (something, I think, that Scütz does pretty well, too). Biber and Buxtehude, on the other hand, seem to express the infinite complexity of the human experience. But that's a highly personal response to this music.

One of the great rewards we are now reaping from the HIP movement, to my mind, is that it is now possible to hear performances of Baroque music with life, fire, and romantic (not 'Romantic') whimsy. Who could possibly imagine this recording fifty years ago?

The reason 'Romantic' is used in a pejorative sense when it comes to Baroque music is probably because everybody can still remember all of those recordings with performances that, steeped in the Romantic tradition, sound very nice, but actually obscure the music on the page. The Pablo Casals Cello suites fall into this category for me. What you hear in those recordings is a truly amazing musician, making some pretty remarkable music, but the legitimacy of his interpretation doesn't survive even a cursory examination of the scores.

This fairly comprehensively addresses the query posed by MrY in reply #41. We can see an immediate confusion here between a) "historically-informed Bach performance", b) "pianoforte performance technique", and c) merely "playing Bach on the pianoforte using a pianoforte technique".

This confusion is fully crystallized in Strina's reply #45, especially in her observation concerning the actual instrument used. Since in discussing the pianoforte Rosalyn's view of dynamics applies a clear distinction between p and pp, she is already conceptualising a "functionality of purpose" in the use of dynamics completely alien to anything expected by composers of the time of Bach. (Bach regularly used f and p to establish structural opposites of intensity; but he never [to my knowledge] extended this to pp and ff - let alone to exploiting such minute differences that might have existed between p and a possibly hypothetical "pp".)

So the perceived "need" (on the pianoforte - a name that originally simply combined the two dynamics of p and f into a single name for a single-keyboard instrument now capable of evincing both dynamic layers) to create a greater range of dynamics can only be viewed as essentially "Romantic" (or at the very least "post-Baroque") in outlook.

This "need" - as indicated by the varying pianistic techniques Rosalyn outlines for achieving it - is also quite unconnected with any clear Baroque aesthetic wherein dynamics were part of the structural discourse, as opposed to being merely "colouristic" or "expressive" (as soon became associated with and indispensable to later styles making a clear use of these possibilities upon the pianoforte).

Much - indeed most - of what Rosalyn states in this passage has absolutely no causal connection whatever with either the harpsichord or the organ. This is because upon those instruments key pressure (or "velocity") has absolutely no effect at all upon the loudness or attack of the note(s) played! Therefore the technical performing apparatus required is very different, requiring a completely different use of the fingers (and fingering) as well as arm posture. And this shows in Rosalyn's playing too...

...when she plays a fugue, the texture is dominated by an ever-present and (in my view) oppressively overplayed "simultaneous duality" wherein the Subject is performed forte against the other counterpoint(s) that are mostly piano. Sometimes, for additionally "expressive" purposes, this enforced opposition is extended outwards to incorporate pp and ff. But none of this behaviour connects directly with anything structural within the music itself - it is merely a later approach to performing it that is being witnessed, and one too that carries with it 150 years-worth of pianoforte "baggage". Contrapuntal fugal layers were always conceived as being of equal importance and emphasis to the structure, for which reason they were constantly being inverted so as to stress this equality. This was quite contrary to the later approaches (like Rosalyn's) of giving greater importance and weight to some melodies while less to others (concurrently!).

However, I should never be one to complain about performing Bach upon the pianoforte, especially since I have spent many years doing that myself. What one does for private and recreational purposes is one's own business! I am concerned, however, that since the overwhelming recorded output of Bach's keyboard music is still rendered upon the pianoforte (with an even more unbelievably diverse range of "Romantic" interpretations being thus made available) listeners will come to regard this as in some way actually related to the sound-world of Bach.

Baziron

You could on the other hand ask a kind member to provide a copy of it for you.

I have been known to play Bach on a piano but generally I'm not very interested in hearing other people do it (apart from interesting ideas like using a fortepiano for the Musical Offering). I do, in strina's words, regard Bach as being on "a plane of his own" but for me that doesn't particularly imply reverence as such.

I'm not disagreeing with your general thrust here but nonetheless one should never say never.



(cotitsalv)

There are also frequent pianissimi in for example the first movement of Brandenburg 5.

And here's a nice one from Brandenburg 3.



(Also cotitsalv)

I learnt at school that Bach variously used piano, pp and pianissimo... pp is often (or perhaps usually?) editorially rendered as più piano in the NBA.

After Rosalyn on touch let us move on to Rosalyn on the pedals! But of course that is purely pianistic. She does not seem to favour the right-foot pedal much at all, and uses the left-foot pedal to control the quality of tone rather than its quantity. In fact she recommends the use not of pedals but of fingers alone to produce any degree of both softness and legato. (The "Book I" to which she refers is the first of the three books of musical examples she put together, not the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier.)

I, like Baz, am baffled why Bach (or Scarlatti) on piano is so dominant, and still seen as the norm.

I suppose pianists (and famous pianists) want to play them, & there is the notion that Bach "transcends" any particularity as an C18 composer, wrote universal abstract music etc. and would have preferred modern instruments etc. (I'm not sure how the argument gets from universality/abstraction to a preference for modern instruments: but it seems to, invariably. Presumably modern instruments are "real", atemporal instruments which have arrived at a state of perfection). All conveniently ignoring Bach's clear fascination with instrumental colour & indeed with the musical instruments surrounding him & with the technology of those instruments.

Then there's the usual reaction to the harpsichord (Sir Thomas Beecham on a hot tin roof) which I suspect is based not on listening to the varieties of harpsichords (or clavichords, or lute-harpsichords) that harpsichordists play now & have for decades, but on distant memories of Landowska-monsters.

All that said, there are multiple, multiple, recordings and performances and performers of Bach and Scarlatti on the, ahem, proper instruments.