Preparation for Bach E major concerto

June 14, 2009 at 03:19 PM ·

I too love this concerto. I've never performed it, but I have played and taught it. I think it is appropriate to take this on after one has played a couple of the Mozart concertos and perhaps worked on the Prelude to the Bach Partita in E Major. Then you would have all the equipment to read through this at a reasonable pace and work it up to what you want it to be.

Good luck.

Andy

June 14, 2009 at 11:30 PM ·

• live in the key of Emajor with scales, thirds, octaes and all those other goodies
• listen to the concerto performed by other artists

HECK, LIFE IS SHORT...JUST DO IT, you'll never master it... nobody ever masters Mr. Bach (my philosophy lesson for the day)

June 15, 2009 at 01:52 AM ·

Remember your d sharps!

Don't forget that between and d sharp and and e is a half step, esp. in those second pos. sixteenth note runs!

Don't let the double stops phase you! I first learned them by plucking them (a la guitar) then applying them slowly in arco practice!

Make sure that you add crescendos into the measures where you have sixteenth notes of the same pitch (in the beginning, with the high b's on the e string, for example).

You will be able to tell when you play a wrong note--- not much explaining needed.

Good luck,  I learned this piece last summer. It's really great.

June 15, 2009 at 05:56 PM ·

Thanks for the replies :) I´ve already listened religiously to the whole concert on the CD, sometimes up to 6 times a day. I´ll buy the sheetmusic later this summer and start working a tiny bit on it, just to entertain myself and I´ll most likely study it seriously next year.

June 15, 2009 at 08:21 PM ·

 Greetings,

I would cauiton you against listening to only one CD many time sa dya of a piece you are going to play. That would tend to lead a lot of people into imitation of one artsist.  Try and get a varied perspective if you can.  Maybe get into the keyboard works and cantatas more.

At risk of annoying half the panet I would say that I really don`t enjoy the wya a lot of player splay Bach today.  As a result of all the scholarship stuff and getting rid of romatic traces blah blah it is often very fast.  Consider ASMs incredible speed on her latest disk.   Yet Milstein often said, `Beware ofplaying Bach too fast.`   So much is lost for me in the resulatant kind of relenltless `rumtitumtitum ` sound that results.

One of my favoite recordings of this concerto (which I actually agree with Auer,  is not Bach at his best, except in the slow movement) is by Huberman.  Sure its kind of scratchy and dated but he takes the time and has thought about every note and its meaning inrelation to the whole and he uses a huge diversity of bowings and articualitons including bits of spiccato etc and somehow he creates a masterpiece.  To up the annoyanc elevel even further I suspect most of the players at this years QE couldn`t even do the kind of bowings he did r in the combinations he did.  Art is about variety.  Casals understood this to the nth degree. Read the books (By Blum- Caslas and the Art of Interpretation ` isone) and listen to his celloplaying. There is anothe rgrea lesson in Bach.

Cheers,

Buri

June 15, 2009 at 10:06 PM ·

If you're moved by this music, why not rush out and buy it today and start getting it under your fingers?  The music isn't expensive, and even if you're working intensively on other things with your teacher, you ought to be able to fit in some time here and there exploring the E major concerto.  There's no law against playing music for pure enjoyment on your own, even if you don't play it completely to your satisfaction at first. 

I very much agree that you shouldn't listen to just one recording.  But with all due respect I don't agree that this isn't Bach at his best.  Well, Bach at his best is an extraordinarily high standard to meet, and maybe it isn't on the same level as the St. Matthew Passion or the Goldberg Variations or the Chaconne, but it's a wonderful and exciting piece and very satisfying to play.

June 16, 2009 at 11:06 PM ·

From having played it myself, as well as from working with my students, there is indeed one quality which comes to mind first and foremost regarding this great work.  That quality is harmonic intonation.--The ability to find for each note the exact pitch which most harmoniously blends with the key note of the music at that point.  For example, the opening is an E Major triad. The G# which sounds right will be the G# of E Major, a slightly different pitch than the G# that would most please us in another key (e.g. A Major). Playing with beautiful harmonic intonation is not principally about knowing facts, nor is it about listening harder.  It is about training oneself to listen in a certain way. It is about holding the key note in memory and using the key note, rather than only the previous note in the melody, as your pitch reference. In the Bach E Major Concerto, play the first two notes in third position but for the second note play a double stop of E and G# instead of G# alone.  In performance, the G# that makes a harmonious double stop with E is the one you will want to play.  Although this G# is written as a single note, it is, in a way, a double stop.---When you play it there will still be some E reverberating in the room or hall.  And even if you were to play it in an anechoic chamber, the E would be reverberating in the listener's memory!

I have found the following exercises helpful for cultivating harmonic listening:

Make up a tune.  After you have sung or played just a few notes (before the tune is finished) challenge yourself to sing one note which would finish the tune.  The note that sounds like a convincing ending is the key note.  This is an exercise in finding the key note by ear.  

I like to do this with my students.  I sing (without naming notes - on "la, la, la"): "G# E E F# G# G# A G# F# G# E F# E D#"  Then I say: Quick! Sing one note to end my tune!  Don't think about it and don't name it. Just sing.  If the student sings an E, he has located the key note---By ear, not by theory.  By ear is relevant to performing.  Theory is not directly relevant.

A practice procedure which is helpful to cultivating harmonic intonation is to take that part of your piece that remains in one key, and stop every few measures (or notes) to play a reference triad in that key.  The idea is to train the ear to use the key note as the pitch reference.   In the second movement of Bruch G Minor Concerto there are gorgeous changes of key.  I write each key change into my students' music and ask them to stop before each and play a few repetitions of the triad for that key.  Then immediately play the passage in that key.  (In many pieces by Cesar Franck, one has to stop every two seconds!)

Listening to Kreisler play one of his own, or someone else's, compositions with lots of key changes is a marvelous lesson in harmonic intonation.  

June 18, 2009 at 11:01 PM ·

June 19, 2009 at 04:54 PM ·

Thanks everyone so much for the replies. They are all really helpful and thoughtful. I shall listen to the concerto on more recordings and the idea of singing it is really good. I happen to have a pretty good voice (I´m mezzo sopran and my voice is rather soft) so I´ll walk around singing the concerto later on this summer :p