R.I.P. to a Bach master
If you're a Bach lover of more-or-less the same age as me, you too grew up with the ear-opening Telefunken "Das Alte Werk" recordings by the pioneers of the burgeoning original-instrument movement. Other than the Austrian Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the most-featured performers were Dutch or Belgian: flutist and recorder player Frans Brüggen, cellist Anner Bylsma, the brothers Barthold, Sigiswald and Wieland Kuijken, and the master of the harpsichord, clavichord and organ, Gustav Leonhardt. On Monday, Leonhardt died at the age of 83.
Area music lovers may recall the magnificent recital Leonhardt performed on the then newly-installed 1985 C. B. Fisk organ at Mt. Holyoke College's Abbey Memorial Chapel, and a chamber program with Brüggen and Bylsma at Amherst College a few years later. Even for those who never heard him, Leonhardt's legacy lives on through the many outstanding keyboard artists he taught; indeed, it would almost be easier to name the current top harpsichordists who were not his pupils than those who were. And for a generation, from the 1950's through the early '80's, Leonhardt's were the Bach keyboard recordings you had to hear if you wanted to be smart and up-to-date -- not to mention if you wanted a profound, sensitive deeply musical engagement with these instruments and these works. For while Bach's music is hard to destroy, it's much harder to render musically on instruments insensitive to the nuances of touch and color that a piano provides. But if you lend an ear to the Leonhardt recordings we'll feature over the next several days on WFCR. you'll hear how it's done -- how to connect some notes, separate others, make some longer, others shorter, group them this way or that way, speed up a little here, slow down a little there, and breathe life into these potentially dry works -- and why he will be heard and remembered as long as we play classical music on the radio.
Here's a bewigged Leonhardt playing the solo from the Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, at the organ for a Preludio by Buxtehude, and performing works by Purcell at his final recital in Paris, December 12, 2011.