The Netherlands Bach Society has done an incredible job capturing his pieces, using stunning camerawork and high quality recordings. It’s such a pleasure.

https://youtu.be/74suFWTO8P0

Also frankly the harpsichord is a much better instrument for WTC Books 1&2, especially with the added focus on video. Something about it just speaks to the soul.

> Also frankly the harpsichord is a much better instrument for WTC Books 1&2, especially with the added focus on video.

Maybe. Personally, I love listening to the harpischord but for limited periods of time whereas I can listen to piano all day long.

You kind of miss the variation in volume. I think Bach used harpischords partly for technical reasons - the piano hadn't been invented - and preferred the clavichord but that was too quiet for performing to many people.

Bach knew about pianos, he even worked as a “piano salesman” for a period of time

> Bach went on to become an agent for Silbermann, selling his pianos in Leipzig. There’s even a receipt signed by Bach on May 9, 1749, selling a “Piano et Forte” to a Polish count, Jan Casimir von Branitzky.

From https://notanothermusichistorycliche.blogspot.com/2016/07/di...

Bach's criticism of Silbermann's earlier pianos led to substantial improvements.

Yes, he hated pianos when he first had the opportunity to try them. It is possible however that the first Silbermann prototypes, which is what he tried, were of low quality, even compared to other early pianos of the time. He certainly changed his opinion over time though and I agree with you that Silbermann must have listened to Bach’s early criticism. Anyway it is probable that Bach’s favourite keyboard instrument was the lute-harpsichord (see other link I posted in this thread).

Ah ok I got that a bit wrong. Though he would have been 64 at the time of sale and died a year after so I guess they were around in the later part of his life.

You didn’t get it completely wrong in the sense that piano was in its infancy at the time and nowhere near the capabilities and sonic features of modern pianos. So it is possible that when Bach wrote his “fur klavier” (“for keyboard instruments”) compositions, he didn’t have piano in mind. Probably his favourite keyboard instrument was the lute-harpsichord since he owned one https://baroquemusic.org/barluthp.html

That's awesome. I'd never heard of the lute-harpsichord before, but the sound is great! The bass is so deep and mellow, but otherwise sounds pretty similar to a harpsichord. I love it, thank you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNYJirAcyJo

I'm not religious at all but this is one of my favourite pieces: Erbarme dich, mein Gott https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBeXF_lnj_M

Do you have any good links for performances in the period style and instruments? THese are great in their own right, but I'd love to know how this music might have sounded in Bach's day.

Someone's already mentioned Tafelmusik. I'll throw in some of my favorites as well:

Giuliano Carmagnola playing the Bach violin and harpsichord sonatas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziZPanY50-c

Jordi Savall and Ton Koopman, viola da gamba and harpsichord sonatas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HayeiZb5CUA

Rachel Podger does quite a good recording of the Bach sonatas and partitas, but every violinist plays these (I mean that quite literally; violin competitions, modern or Baroque, regularly require a movement from these along side whatever else you do) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2e3eoOXeNs

also a master class of her teaching the Chaconne from these, which vies for the greatest piece ever written for violin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhcPDo3UPw0

Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert, Bach 4 harpsichord concerto (crank the volume on this one like you're listening to metal) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA1L0SsEXxU&list=PLF81B6EFFA...

I'm going to stop now because I could do this for hours before we even get into other composers of the period.

Here's one on clavichord: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_Nto_-j5Ao

I remember an amazing concert in an old stone church in Italy. The first half was upstairs on pedalled harpsichord. Then we all went down into the vaults of the crypt, crowded in, and the second half was on clavichord in this tiny, echoing space. The performer managed to find a space you could use to perform with that instrument, and the kind of audience that shows up to such a thing was dead silent.

Anything by the group Tafelmusik.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tafelmusik_Baroque_Orchestra

Jean Rondeau is great on harpsichord (Goldberg Variations): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AtOPiG5jyk

a few hours earlier, I was listening to the Bach's Concerto No.1 by Bernstein and Gould:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Nx09pigZRI

in the first few minutes, Bernstein explains that it is hard to play Bach because there aren't many clues left in the score, leaving interpretation of the music on the conductor / musicians.

At this point, after a century of work, we have what seems to be a compelling performance practice that matches the evidence we can infer from the period.

I wouldn't pay much attention to either Bernstein or Gould on the question of Bach performance practice. I spent years studying this, and Bach recordings by either man sound bizarrely wrong, like someone weeping, emoting, and shouting their way through a recitation of Frost's 'The Road Not Taken'.

> there aren't many clues left in the score, leaving interpretation of the music on the conductor / musicians.

That's both true and false. It's true in that there are few explicit markings like you find on a modern score, and there was an expectation that the performer would take the score and improvise and ornament it according to a commonly shared performance practice. Think of it more like how a really skilled rock band will take a song as a base structure and fill in solos, bridges, ornaments and the like.

It's false in that the musical language was so full of idiom and convention that, if you know how to read it, the clues are all over the place. Especially in Bach where the idioms interlock in an almost crystalline way. There are only a few passages in Bach where I know of two quite different overall interpretations that are both reasonable. Compare Anthony Newman and Wanda Landowska playing the first variation of the Goldberg Variations, about halfway through, the cascading down and up. Newman follows the base line in making it a series of repeats, Landowska carries it through as dips in the same long line. Both work, but it's hard to imagine a third that doesn't fight the structure. Gould's is a ragtime disaster.

Look up "Baroque performance practice" and you'll find a mass of material.