"Bach and Sons: Listening for the Future" is the theme of my current recital series. Along with selections by the aforenamed I am programming requests from students and audience members. This month's request was for Chopin waltzes. What a tremendous gift that request has turned out to be!
It has caused me to imagine Chopin having heard CPE Bach and WF Bach in addition to his well-known admiration for Bach pere. I hear in the waltzes, especially the A minor, direct connections to keyboard techniques used by the two Bach sons: it is extraordinary what a difference it makes in recreating a sound universe.
I feel privileged to have had an organist's training with so much emphasis on articulation and touch--it occurs to me that every keyboard musician of that time would have played many different instruments each with a distinctive action, tonal coloration, and touch to match. I can only imagine JS Bach sitting down at a fortepiano and realizing that this was a whole new animal, therefore not presuming to write for it just because it was there. At the same time I can imagine his taking to this new creation had he but world enough and time. I see no logic whatsoever in emulating Baroque keyboard sounds, whatever they may be, on the modern piano.
