The greatest Bach you never heard

I must admit that originally I had another idea to write today but I can't find the elusive Schoenberg piece that uses Pachelbel's canon (ye, I am for reals).


But as luck turns out I remembered the greatest Bach of all I never heard! Of course, because it's not Bach after all.  And all Bach lovers should flock out and start loving this now: Silvius Leopold Weiss (!). Go forth, transcribe to bring into the world what we have been missing.  It's as if Bach had twice as many children -- that makes 40 altogether.  All his music is gold, it's just been hidden in lute scores...


If people feel so compelled to transcribe Bach, Weiss should be getting a lot more investment.

-Edit-

For once I am compelled to put 2 videos for one post. I think it is justifiable since the first one is so short anyway:

Today's Performers - Shoji

It has been extremely refreshing for me to make some time out of my schedule to go watch live concerts of new generation artists that inevitably shape the future.  Too often do I live in the bubble that stops in 1960, where Zukerman and Perlman are a young novelty.  Reason being that it is hard to discern and find artists that say something meaningful -- oh they say plenty most of the time, but where is the depth?

A few months ago I went to Carnegie's Weill to watch Sayaka Shoji who is only four years my senior.  She presented a wonderful recital program that had the obvious Beethoven and Schubert sonata, but featured as well an Ernest Bloch sonata and a sonata written for her by Avner Dorman -- which for me completely took the cake that night.  It was thoughtful playing throughout, and paired with fresh programming (that was serious yet solidly entertaining) it made for a great experience.

Shoji shows that you don't need a dose full of flash to string together a coherent recital, and what flash is used adds to the overall experience.

Here she is playing a Shostakovich Prelude:

Inspired by the Argentine political mess

With the Cooper Piano Trio we have been giving Beethoven's famous op.1/3 c minor trio a whirl. It is noteworthy that his master at the time, Haydn, thought that of the set of three trios, the c minor was not going to be understood by the public (whether he liked it himself some may argue about, but to me, that's a polite way of saying it was bad, considering Haydn's preferences). In either case, Beethoven met valid resistance. People may not have been ready, but it wasn't a political ploy to suppress Beethoven.

I can understand the fuss with Beethoven because of the willfulness of his music, but if you tell me Rachmaninov caused a stir (the equivalent to good chocolate cake doing so) it wouldn't make sense.

The reason cannot be musical, it has to be external (political), and indeed it was.

When Rachmaninov premiered his First Symphony it was inevitably rigged to fail. All the old Russian old-timers (notably Korsakov and Glazunov) did not take too warmly to Rachmaninov, and they held the keys for its success. A negligent conductor, intentional tampering of the score, and a hungry-for-blood press led to one of the most stunning attempts to destroy a composer's career.

Rachmaninov fell into clinical depression for years, it was a work he had poured sometimes 10 hours of work a day over, throughout a year -- more than any other of his works. The original manuscript was lost. The only reason it was able to be reconstructed is thanks to spare orchestra parts found by chance in a Russian national library and the 2 piano score to the work that still survived. Rachmaninov never lived to hear a second performance of his work, which did go on to achieve high critical acclaim.

I need not go on about what this implies about Korsakov and Glazunov.

Why this is not more thoroughly discussed is beyond me.