Thread: Your favourite Bach pieces on piano?

What are your favourite pieces that can be played on a piano from Bach? (organ and harpsichord included)
Personally I'm liking a lot the Well Tempered Clavier, book 2; to name a few I'm almost in love with BWV 872, 875 and 891. I love also the fuga of BWV 915, playing it fast is in fact challenging.

Art of fugue (all), Partita No.3 BWV 827 (Corrente), French Suite No.1, Toccata BWV 914, Goldberg Variations, to name a few. I prefer harpsichord to piano. Organ is good too.

The Italian concerto and the Inventions sound alright on piano but I prefer them on harpsichord.

The inventions and the Well-Tempered Clavier sound okay on piano, but I think they really shine on harpsichord. However, I think Couperin's music actually works much better on the piano (because he puts in so many damn ornamentations).

The partitas, the French suites, the Goldberg variations. The fun stuff, in other words.

I think Harpsichord is much better for Bach's original compositions. I prefer Busoni's Transcriptions of Choral-Preludes on the Piano, Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland is my favorite.

I really enjoy the rendition of the Kunst der Fuge by Pierre-Laurent Aimard on the piano, but that masterpiece is a joy when performed solo or by an ensemble (Jordi Saval and Hesperion XX have made a nice recording).

Harpischord doesn't really work for me, so I tend to listen to performances on (modern) piano instead.

I love that g-minor toccata as well although the first work that came to mind was bwv914; played correctly, of course. And yes,...playing it fast can, indeed, be a feat. I, however, do prefer the fugue in the e-minor toccata.

I know some will disagree with me on this and that's okay, but I can't listen to any Bach on the modern piano. His music was written for harpsichord, clavichord, or organ, and to hear Bach's music played on an instrument that did not exist in Bach's time to me is like listening to Beethoven on an electronic synthesizer.

Yay!

Exactly my sentiments too.

Bach's flute sonatas ...sound so much better on the authentic repro' (if that is not an irony in itself) baroque traverso than the modern silver Boehm flute.

Originally Posted by Olias

I know some will disagree with me on this and that's okay, but I can't listen to any Bach on the modern piano. His music was written for harpsichord, clavichord, or organ, and to hear Bach's music played on an instrument that did not exist in Bach's time to me is like listening to Beethoven on an electronic synthesizer.

I have nothing against Beethoven on a synthesizer at least in principle. The number of times I have heard a performance on modern instruments which turn out to be my favourites is significant enough for me to be a skeptic on authenticity.

Originally Posted by Olias

I know some will disagree with me on this and that's okay, but I can't listen to any Bach on the modern piano. His music was written for harpsichord, clavichord, or organ, and to hear Bach's music played on an instrument that did not exist in Bach's time to me is like listening to Beethoven on an electronic synthesizer.

I don't care if the instrument being used is the one originally meant by the author or not. Any instrument can express peculiar feelings. I simply don't see a point in being that close minded. If it's music you like, why discard it?
Also, notice that I haven't simply written the name of a whole book, but some pieces, which in my opinion achieve a greater power when played on a piano.

If it's music you like, why discard it?

The music itself ... is written for a particular instrument. Why question the choice of the composer, to chose a particular flute, over say, a tin can, or a synthesiser keyboard?

Too many moderns amongst us presume 'equivalence'. Things are not inherently equal: the sonorities and textures from a period instrument, are unique to that period: this is the nature of aesthetics.

Substitution by the latest digital synthesiser, is a commercial contemporary proposition - not particularly an exploration of the very tonal and sonic qualities invested by the composer in his equivalent.

On the otherhand, if music is written specifically for digital tape and instrumentation, it would sound rather paltry played on period baroque instruments.

If you find that pieces by a composer, not written; not intended for piano, sound better on piano; perhaps this says more about your love for the piano as an instrument, rather than the music?

Most music, not intended for the flute, my favourite instrument, sounds atrocious to my ears, when transposed onto the flute. For instance - I've tried transcribing Dvorak's American string quartet on flute and I can't for the life of me agree that the expressivity of the original writings on strings translates at all onto the flute, other than an extreme simplification: a reduction, or a modern hash at turning a stellar compositional masterpiece into a 3 minute pop ditty.

Originally Posted by Head_case

If you find that pieces by a composer, not written; not intended for piano, sound better on piano; perhaps this says more about your love for the piano as an instrument, rather than the music?

A lot of Bach's music (and Baroque for that matter) is written for generic keyboard instruments. This means that at the time a piece could either be performed on a harpsichord (or equivalent) or even organ. Those two instruments have rather different musical qualities, I should think.
This fact always makes me a bit ambivalent towards performing older keyboard music in the piano. Also the composers weren't that purist themselves when it came to adopting newer instruments. This is especially evident when you look at composers who lived during the time when the transition from harpsichord to pianoforte was made gradually and the same goes for pianoforte to the modern grand piano. Beethoven and others were quick to make use of the expanded range of the pianoforte which was still actively developed.
Yes, performing baroque music with an orchestra the size of the monstrosities Wagner and Berlioz scored their pieces for would be a bad idea, in my opinion. But as the older composers were rather vague regarding the choice of instrument for their works, mostly scoring them for keyboard (and accompaniment), I think performing those pieces on modern piano is not that much of a travesty.

Originally Posted by Head_case

The music itself ... is written for a particular instrument. Why question the choice of the composer, to chose a particular flute, over say, a tin can, or a synthesiser keyboard?

Why not? Why can't I do that, if I like the results? What if the composer didn't like a particular instrument, for example, but his music plays very well on it? Seems to me you are underestimating this possibility.
And we are talking about instruments that share common peculiarities.

Originally Posted by Head_case

If you find that pieces by a composer, not written; not intended for piano, sound better on piano; perhaps this says more about your love for the piano as an instrument, rather than the music?

That could be, of course. But why are you excluding the possibility that a piece meant to be played on an instrument can offer different possibilities, in terms of sheer power of communication, on a different one? Especially if we are talking about similar instruments.
Many Bach pieces intended for harpsichord keep getting played on the piano, as a side note.

If you can, name more pieces (single BWVs would be better), so the thread doesn't get that off topic.