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  • (audience applauds)

  • - And we are going to move backwards in time

  • for the last time this afternoon,

  • to the C minor French Suite of Bach.

  • We'll be hearing the allemande, courante, and sarabande.

  • And Mackenzie Melemed is our pianist,

  • and I think we should be seeing him rather shortly (laughs).

  • (audience applauds) Hi Mackenzie.

  • All right.

  • (piano music)

  • (piano music)

  • (piano music)

  • (audience applauds)

  • I certainly don't rule out your playing more of it,

  • but I wanted to make sure we had time

  • to explore here a little bit. - Sure.

  • - And Mackenzie, one thing that you do,

  • which I am very, very happy about,

  • because it's not something one can take for granted,

  • is that you seem to understand very well

  • this device that Bach uses.

  • One notices it perhaps more in the solo violin sonatas

  • and partitas and in the cello suites,

  • in which he creates something which seems to be polyphony,

  • but actually is just as much a single voice.

  • And so even though technically,

  • (piano music)

  • it's actually, of course, as you understand,

  • (piano music)

  • in which certain voices are sustained

  • in order to enrich the texture.

  • So it's very, very important

  • that we play this music that way, and you do it.

  • But I think it's just as important

  • to call attention to one's virtues,

  • as to suggest some solutions to,

  • you know, a few stones and boulders

  • that may show up in our path.

  • So that's a very, very good thing.

  • I'm wondering a little bit about the role of your left hand.

  • You know, Bach is a great, great fan of walking basses.

  • No,

  • what I see.

  • (piano music)

  • Sorry, the other way around.

  • He's playing chess!

  • He just moved the knight!

  • And there's the bishop!

  • And now the pawn is coming right.

  • If you don't watch out,

  • the queen's gonna swoop right in, ah!

  • Oh, E flat major, there we are.

  • (audience laughs)

  • The music is always strategic.

  • And so one needs to see the forest through the trees.

  • And so I'm not sure that playing

  • (piano music)

  • makes it clearer

  • what is going on strategically in that bass line.

  • I certainly wouldn't countenance

  • your playing it staccato, never.

  • But something...

  • (piano music)

  • (hums)

  • And to this, then, comes the observation that

  • in music of the 18th century,

  • and of the Baroque in particular,

  • one breathes after the first note of the bar

  • or sometimes the first note of the beat.

  • The music is almost always upbeat in character.

  • Are there exceptions?

  • You bet there are.

  • (piano music)

  • But the first one, yes, already the second one

  • has got a little bit of an upbeat in character.

  • And then,

  • (piano music)

  • then the upbeat character wins.

  • So that's something I think you can help us with.

  • And all the way through,

  • in the performances of each of these three dances,

  • Mackenzie, my impression was that you were either

  • involved with the activity of the moment

  • or, in the case of the courante, were being driven

  • by a notion of the tempo, which was very fast,

  • which made it more difficult for us

  • to see what the game plan is,

  • to understand the curvature of the piece.

  • And so in a piece by Bach, of this kind,

  • also a prelude from the Well-Tempered Clavier,

  • for instance, or

  • bespoke

  • cello suites and

  • violin sonatas and partitas,

  • in general, the composer first tells you

  • where you are and who your are.

  • And as soon as you know that,

  • he says let's go strolling.

  • Let's go for adventure.

  • So we go through the first opening where we have...

  • (piano music)

  • Now we know that this is a piece in C minor,

  • not because he said so,

  • (piano music)

  • but because he proved it.

  • At the beginning, it's a matter of faith.

  • By the time you get to the end of the second bar,

  • everybody agrees, okay, it's C minor.

  • The next thing that's going to happen is

  • it's going go to the relative major.

  • If it were in the major key, it would go into the dominant,

  • but it's going to go from C minor to E flat major.

  • And for some people who are bred and,

  • you know, born and raised on Haydn and Mozart

  • and Beethoven and Schubert, they would say that's it.

  • So you'd get to here.

  • (piano music)

  • See, nobody in this room or watching on the internet

  • or anybody else would object to that.

  • It would be perfectly legitimate,

  • except it's only half the way there.

  • He goes from here to here, (piano music)

  • and then to here.

  • What does that do?

  • It takes you from C minor in this case

  • to E flat major to G minor,

  • which, at the very last moment

  • (piano music)

  • becomes G major.

  • And not, in fact...

  • (piano music)

  • Why?

  • Because it has a double function.

  • If it's not G major, you can't go back.

  • (piano music)

  • So it's got a double face to it.

  • So if we understand that the music first defines who it is,

  • then it goes someplace,

  • then it goes someplace else.

  • Then before I even hear you play, Mackenzie,

  • the second half,

  • I think, he's going to go from point A to point B

  • and from point B to point C.

  • And point A is where he started before.

  • He ended, he went from C to E flat to G.

  • So he's going to start in G, and he's going to end in C

  • 'cause he started in C.

  • So, what's going to happen in the middle?

  • Ah!

  • We'll wait and see.

  • We'll find out.

  • But there is a double kind of symmetry

  • that operates in these dances,

  • that one has to make absolutely palpable to the listener.

  • There is the

  • musical idea symmetry,

  • which is replicated exactly in the second half

  • as it was in the first.

  • So you start,

  • (piano music)

  • and the second half,

  • slightly upside down, but it's clear that it's the same.

  • So the events follow themselves melodically in parallel.

  • But in terms of the tonalities, they're mirror image,

  • C to G, G to C.

  • So the coordination between the music,

  • which is doing this on the one level and this on the other,

  • is fascinating.

  • It's especially fascinating

  • if you can communicate it to the audience

  • because then the tale you have to tell

  • becomes fateful and entertaining

  • and amazing.

  • Otherwise, it's just agreeable.

  • Hm?

  • (piano music)

  • Now, so I still think, Mackenzie,

  • you can help me feel that everything you've played,

  • up to that point, goes to the end,

  • so that (hums) (piano music)

  • I hear then, (piano music)

  • (hums)

  • ah, now!

  • Because even then...

  • (piano music)

  • I agree, it's not so good.

  • I just made it up, you know, so it's not so good.

  • But it's not unbelievable either.

  • And it's a way of saying that it takes a while

  • for us to realize what he's actually trying to do,

  • which is not to take us

  • through the circle of fifths (piano music)

  • in C minor,

  • but actually to take us someplace else.

  • See, we depend on, you're the tour guide.

  • If you don't point out the Town Hall

  • on the left from the tour bus,

  • I may be talking with my neighbor and miss it completely.

  • So you need to tell us what we need to know.

  • (piano music)

  • Good!

  • Yeah, you see, there's much more curvature now,

  • and it becomes much more engrossing.

  • I noticed that towards the end,

  • your left hand got progressively more engaged,

  • and then things got even better.

  • So really think about this.

  • (piano music)

  • Notice that the period of each cell

  • is sometimes longer and sometimes shorter.

  • That affects the heart rate of the listeners.

  • That's a good thing.

  • Now, you took the first repeat and not the second,

  • maybe because you were eyeing the time a little bit.

  • But I believe that in these pieces,

  • which are binary with repeats,

  • you should do them all or do none of them.

  • To be selective and to say, oh, this is a fast one,

  • so I'll do it twice,

  • but this is a slow one, so I'll do it only once,

  • is not such a good idea.

  • And this is not like a Beethoven sonata

  • where the second part,

  • with the development and the recapitulation,

  • is much larger than the first part with the exposition,

  • so you could imagine leaving out the second repeat

  • but not the first one.

  • I think, in this particular case,

  • and besides, it gives you an opportunity to decorate,

  • of which you did a little bit,

  • but of which you could do much more,

  • much more.

  • I'll say something about that

  • when we reach the sarabande in a few minutes.

  • Okay, in the courante,

  • I felt that the driver's seat was the tempo.

  • It was very hard to hear.

  • (piano music) (hums)

  • You know, help me to understand

  • the shaping of this right hand.

  • (piano music)

  • That is so unbelievably better than what you did before.

  • Do we have agreement in the house?

  • (audience applauds) You see?

  • Because you started to engage in storytelling,

  • you became interested in the plot line

  • that the succession of tones in the right hand creates.

  • And then, of course, we become fascinated.

  • You know, this is the thing,

  • ladies and gentlemen, about Bach.

  • We all know he's the greatest.

  • We all know that no music afterwards

  • was unaffected by what he did.

  • People like Mozart and Beethoven, in their old age,

  • all they could do was emulate Bach.

  • So you have Opus 106 of Beethoven and Opus 110,

  • and you've got Opus 101.

  • You've got the Grosse Fugue.

  • You've got all of that, and Mozart to 570,

  • blah, blah, blah, and we have Jupiter Symphony, okay.

  • We've got all of that.

  • But go into a student recital,

  • and look around as the Bach piece gets played.

  • And people look like this,

  • and in no time at all...

  • (audience laughs)

  • And you know why?

  • Because

  • we've got 500, no, 800, no, 900 cable channels.

  • And before we've gone through them with the remote

  • and figured out that nothing is on,

  • (audience laughs)

  • we could have written a quarter,

  • read a quarter of a novel.

  • And the thing about

  • that is it teaches us not to concentrate.

  • People in today's society are unable to think about anything

  • for more than about eight to 10 seconds.

  • And Bach does not countenance a lack of concentration.

  • You miss out on bar seven, and you're out for the count.

  • You want to lean over to your friend, said what happened?

  • You know, too late, too late.

  • So one has to really, in playing this music,

  • challenge people's tendency not to pay attention,

  • not by playing the music in an arbitrary

  • and ridiculous and caricaturistic way,

  • but to play it for what's happening,

  • and so that we hear that this time around,

  • you don't end with a period to the sentence,

  • (piano music)

  • but with a question.

  • (piano music)

  • So when the statement becomes a question,

  • it says there's certain things

  • that are going to happen the way they did before.

  • It's going to go to E flat major,

  • and it's going to go to G major,

  • which is G minor and then major.

  • That's going to happen, but, but, but, but,

  • you better listen 'cause there's other stuff going on here.

  • And that is what you were starting to do,

  • and then the relationship

  • between the right hand and the left hand,

  • which develops only really in the second half.

  • Ha, second half.

  • (piano music)

  • Yeah, and actually, it goes to here.

  • (piano music)

  • So maybe then,

  • (piano music)

  • maybe put it on the top.

  • It does not always have to be

  • on the top note, by any means.

  • You know?

  • And sometimes Bach does wonderful things,

  • in the D major Toccata.

  • (piano music) (hums)

  • And there is the note in the middle, which is the king,

  • and the others resonate.

  • It's the same thing as the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto.

  • (piano music) (hums)

  • It's not the top voice,

  • but everybody understands that it actually is.

  • You see, so you can decide what to do with that.

  • Now, I would suggest that you take a leaf

  • from the harpsichord player's book

  • and understand that one of the best ways

  • you can make this music yet livelier but organic

  • is to understand that the individual eighth notes

  • can be of different durations.

  • They don't just have to be louder and softer,

  • simply because on this instrument

  • we can play louder and softer.

  • But you think about (hums),

  • (piano music)

  • it's not the same thing.

  • (piano music)

  • You know?

  • Yes, you can make a crescendo, and that's pretty good.

  • But the crescendo, compared with the subtlety

  • of slight variations in lengths of sounds

  • and sometimes taking freedom,

  • as I said before, the music tends to breathe

  • at the beginning of a bar.

  • So you come along here.

  • (piano music)

  • You see, pianists don't think of doing things like that.

  • Harpsichordists do it all the time.

  • One of the reasons they do it all the time is

  • sometimes they have to switch from manual to manual,

  • to go from louder to softer.

  • You know, so they do that.

  • Organists do that.

  • So we should learn to do that too.

  • Okay, sarabande.

  • Yeah.

  • (piano music)

  • Good.

  • You see, we have, as I'm sure you know,

  • in the sources for the Six English Suites,

  • which were composed quite some time

  • before these French Suites,

  • we have, in the case of the Second English Suite in A minor,

  • after the sarabande,

  • there is (speaking in French),

  • the decorations of the same sarabande.

  • And in the Third English Suite in G minor,

  • once again, we have the decorations of

  • this same sarabande.

  • What's fascinating about those

  • is not just the degree of their invention

  • or, in fact, the extraordinary eloquence of how

  • really remarkably

  • active they are.

  • But he establishes two principles of ornamentation,

  • which I think we need to be aware of,

  • when we play sarabandes in particular, but actually,

  • just about any movement of a dance suite,

  • especially if you're playing the later partitas

  • where there are slow allemandes.

  • You know, these are a little bit more flowing.

  • And

  • the first decorated version

  • for the A minor English Suite

  • decorates only the top line.

  • So only the melody is subjected to ornamentation.

  • In the case of the G minor, the entire texture is varied.

  • So, what that tells us is that it's up to us

  • to look at a particular sarabande and decide

  • whether the decorations that it is to receive

  • should be more of the melodic kind

  • or the more encompassing kind.

  • I'm delighted that here and there,

  • you made a few minor alterations,

  • but I think you need to

  • be a little bit more unbuttoned with those things.

  • As I'm constantly saying, you've heard me say it too,

  • in the private studio,

  • I don't necessarily recommend

  • that you do this in competitions

  • because it's dangerous,

  • because some of the judges may find it offensive

  • that you have quote "vandalized", quote "desecrated" Bach.

  • I suggest that people who are worried about this

  • walk out on stage and ask the chair of the jury

  • whether she or he would like the repeats to be decorated,

  • and then do what the person says,

  • even though you're not supposed to do that.

  • (audience laughs) You see,

  • I happen to be the president

  • of the International Bach Competition in Leipzig,

  • and we have a clause in our brochure

  • that says stylistically idiomatic decoration

  • of the repeats is expected.

  • (audience chatters)

  • We just want to lay it right out there.

  • So if you come to Leipzig, you know, Mackenzie,

  • that's what you can do.

  • But, you know,

  • you know, (hums) you have (hums)

  • (piano music)

  • et cetera, and I didn't spend

  • 20 minutes sitting at the piano, figuring these things out.

  • I'm just trying stuff out

  • because we're all friends here, I hope.

  • And, you know, you want to make an omelet,

  • you've got to break some eggs.

  • So you have to be willing

  • to stumble a little bit in the practice room,

  • as you develop a vocabulary of these things.

  • But it's terribly important because,

  • you know, you read those treatises of which I spoke,

  • and they are very, very clear

  • that the sole purpose of decoration

  • is the deepening of the expression of the piece.

  • It is not to show that you've got fast fingers.

  • So, just as

  • makeup, exquisitely applied,

  • emphasizes the character of the person applying the makeup,

  • you know, badly applied makeup tries

  • to hide the characteristics of the face,

  • and that doesn't usually turn out nearly so well.

  • So,

  • you want to think about turns of phrase

  • that you have found in other sarabandes by Bach,

  • which lend themselves to theft.

  • And then you just simply transfer them

  • from the sarabande of that particular English Suite

  • or partita or other French Suite,

  • and just plug them in because they work.

  • Try, do second half.

  • (audience laughs)

  • It's all right, I said we're friends.

  • (audience laughs)

  • (piano music)

  • Yeah, you see?

  • And that is so much more personal.

  • (audience applauds)

  • Huh?

  • See, you made everybody very happy.

  • You know, you martyred yourself to the common good.

  • (audience laughs)

  • And the other thing is,

  • when you get to the end of the section,

  • you're allowed also to construct

  • a connective tissue to what follows.

  • So there's nothing wrong with playing...

  • (piano music)

  • (hums)

  • (mumbles) So that

  • communicates a sense of strategy.

  • Bach is a fantastic strategist.

  • If you haven't read it,

  • read the wonderful book by Anner Bylsma,

  • Bach, The Fencing Master.

  • It's a revelation in matters of this kind.

  • But the idea is to create a certain kind

  • of whimsy of imagination.

  • Yes, there's something,

  • remember that there are two kinds of ornaments in

  • the 18th and early 19th century.

  • They're described by the treatises as the voluntary

  • and the involuntary ornaments.

  • (speaks in German)

  • The ones which are the involuntary

  • are those which can be symbolized

  • by those signs that we know,

  • the turn, the trill, the mordent,

  • the pralltriller, the schleifer,

  • all of these things that

  • have these little squiggles of various kinds.

  • Those are the involuntary

  • because there is one way to execute them.

  • The voluntary ones are the free melodic flights of fancy

  • that you interpolate.

  • But what you should be careful of in Bach is that,

  • don't just create, in effect, the diatonic glissando

  • that has sextuplets or groups of 11

  • and so on and so forth 'cause he doesn't do that.

  • His decorations are always metrically rigorous.

  • So that's something that you have to be able to do.

  • Mackenzie, a pleasure.

  • (audience applauds) Thank you.

  • I knew we'd run out of time, (laughs) I just knew it.

  • Thank you, thank you.

  • Bravo!

  • (audience applauds and cheers)

  • What a brave man he is.

  • That's absolutely wonderful.

  • Ah, Juilliard is such a great place.

  • I have such a good time here.

(audience applauds)

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