Play your Bach the Leonhardt way

James McCarty says:

I am not saying that Bach should not be played on the modern piano, but that there are adverse consequences from doing so. I will try to address your arguments, which are the same ones made by pianists everywhere. I write as someone who for many years had a Steinway D in my living room.

Bach indeed played Silbermann fortepianos at the court of Frederick the Great. If you have ever played or heard a Silbermann fortepiano, you will now that its sound resembles the harpsichord much more than it does the modern concert grand. It is the height of presumption to say that Bach would have “welcomed” or liked, much less preferred performances of his music on the modern piano or any other instrument other than the ones he had at his disposal. It is an unanswerable question, and yet one constantly reads or hears pianists arrogantly assuming that their choice of instrument would have been shared by a composer who could have had no notion of what a modern piano sounds or acts like.

The second presumption held by pianists is hinted at by your phrase “an improved version,” i.e., that all change is progress. Not all changes are for the better, and for every alteration that the piano underwent during its long and extensive evolution, some capabilities were gained and some were lost. To oversimplify, the more the piano changed into an instrument that was good for piano music, the more it changed into an instrument that was bad for harpsichord music.

You contend that piano performances are “in no way invalidating or discouraging” harpsichord performances, and in an absolute sense, this is true. However, compared to a few years ago, when major recording companies were issuing harpsichord recordings regularly, the stream now has slowed to a trickle, to be replaced by piano recordings, not only of Bach, François Couperin, Rameau and Scarlatti, but also Louis Couperin, Froberger, and Frescobaldi. One senses the operation of Gresham’s Law (mediocrity drives out excellence.) No longer can one rely on the classical music press (Gramophone, Fanfare, etc.) to find excellent harpsichord performances. I would encourage anyone who is curious to seek out YouTube videos of some of the following players: Jean Rondeau, Benjamin Alard, Pascal Dubreuil, and Aurelien Delage, just to name a few.

If one listens to these and other excellent harpsichordists and then decides that piano performances are the bomb, that’s all well and good. De gustibus non disputandem est. But it would be a crying shame if yet another generation of music lovers were to grow up imagining that Bach wrote “piano concertos,” or that the Goldberg Variations can be authoritatively performed on a modern grand.