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Building a Library
Lucy Parham selects her favourite piano version of JS Bach's Six English Suites (BWV 806-811).
Confusingly, Bach's English Suites are collections of dances in the fashionable French style of the early 18th century, each prefaced by a Prelude. On one level, the Suites are a didactic compendium of keyboard style and technique, including written-out examples (in the Second and Third Suites) of the kind of ornamentation Bach would have expected from players, his students and his own children. But these highly stylized and sophisticated dances are also full of typically Bachian small- and large-scale patterning and meaning, from the musical cypher on Bach's name, to the overarching descending organisation of keys of each successive Suite.
Here is a link to Presto's listing of available recordings of the full set, but note that only piano versions are included in this BaL.
Here are the piano contenders (gleaned from the Presto list):
Ramin Bahrami
Vladimir Feltsman
Walter Gieseking
Glenn Gould
Angela Hewitt
Ivo Janssen*
Robert Levin
Murray Perahia
Andrew Rangell*
Inge Rosar*
Wolfgang Rubsam*
Andras Schiff
Rochelle Sennet
Pietro Soraci
Amadeus Webersinke*
* Added courtesy of Mandryka.
Lucy's choice:
András Schiff (piano)
Decca 4216402
Building a Library
Lucy Parham selects her favourite piano version of JS Bach's Six English Suites (BWV 806-811).
Confusingly, Bach's English Suites are collections of dances in the fashionable French style of the early 18th century, each prefaced by a Prelude. On one level, the Suites are a didactic compendium of keyboard style and technique, including written-out examples (in the Second and Third Suites) of the kind of ornamentation Bach would have expected from players, his students and his own children. But these highly stylized and sophisticated dances are also full of typically Bachian small- and large-scale patterning and meaning, from the musical cypher on Bach's name, to the overarching descending organisation of keys of each successive Suite.
Here is a link to Presto's listing of available recordings of the full set, but note that only piano versions are included in this BaL.
Here are the piano contenders (gleaned from the Presto list):
Ramin Bahrami
Vladimir Feltsman
Walter Gieseking
Glenn Gould
Angela Hewitt
Ivo Janssen*
Robert Levin
Murray Perahia
Andrew Rangell*
Inge Rosar*
Wolfgang Rubsam*
Andras Schiff
Rochelle Sennet
Pietro Soraci
Amadeus Webersinke*
* Added courtesy of Mandryka.
Lucy's choice:
András Schiff (piano)
Decca 4216402
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