# Bach on the harpsichord....your recommendations



## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Hi friends.
Getting ready to get Bach's keyboard works on the harpsichord.
What recordings would you recommend?
Thank you :tiphat:


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

French Suites by Gustav Leonhardt. There's a re-issued 4 CD set on Sony's Vivarte imprint.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Itullian said:


> Hi friends.
> Getting ready to get Bach's keyboard works on the harpsichord.
> What recordings would you recommend?
> Thank you :tiphat:


There are four approaches you can take to exploring harpsichord recordings of Bach

The first, the simplest, is to buy one of the cheap big boxes, which are excellently recorded and often feature top flight musicians, I haven't checked but I think that there are examples of these Bach boxes by Gustav Leonhardt, Bob van Asperen, Kenneth Gilbert and there's one about to be released by Scott Ross. You can sample these guys easily enough and plump for the one who tickles your fancy.

The second is to follow one of the newly emerging "all of Bach" projects which are now well underway. This gives you the advantages of being, in some sense, at the leading edge, and most importantly, of getting to know the music slowly - you are less likely to get drowned in music, and more likely, after a few years, to get a deeper understanding. There are such "all of Bach" cycles underway by Benjamin Alard and Richard Lester.

The third is to get a selection of individual recordings with different approaches and which make use of different types of instrument - Bach on harpsichord is a world where neither style nor instrument is standardised. You could, for example, try individual recordings by Richard Egarr, Colin Tilney, Blandine Verlet, Ton Koopman, Pierre Hantai, Masaaki Suzuki, Kenneth Weiss, Wolfgang Rübsam.

If you choose the third approach, you could get to know the music on harpsichord in a slow and disciplined way (rather than submerging yourself in a big box), and you would begin to appreciate the diversity of instruments and approaches to the score.

The fourth is to focus on uninformed or partially informed interpretations, often on modern reinterpretations of the harpsichord, by performers such Wanda Landowska, Rafael Puyana, Helmut Walcha, Anthony Newman, Ralph Kirkpatrick.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Itullian said:


> Hi friends.
> Getting ready to get Bach's keyboard works on the harpsichord.
> What recordings would you recommend?
> Thank you :tiphat:


I would make sure that you liked the sound quality of the harpsichord by sampling it, if possible - the quality of the instruments can vary greatly - and I personally do not care for harpsichord recordings that are too closely miked or the plucking of the strings is too sharp, irritating, and noticeable. The harpsichord is very hard to record properly, it seems, by engineers who think that you practically have to be inside the instrument in order to enjoy the recording, and I find this incredibly irritating... Well done and not sounding tense, anxious and nervous like a skeleton copulating on a tin roof, but with the 4th movement a little faster than I like it, though exciting:


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

If you can find it, "Bach on the Pedal Harpsichord" is one of the great Bach albums. The aptly named E. Power Biggs plays. Rather overwhelming performances! On a Columbia LP, never issued on CD. There is a superlative digital transfer floating around out there...somewhere...









I see this is on *YouTube*.


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## Dorsetmike (Sep 26, 2018)

There's a good selection of free downloads of Bach on harpsichord and pedal harpsichord at the Baroque Music Library

http://www.baroquemusic.org/bmlcatalogue.html

Scroll down, click on "album cover " thumbnails; You can listen to all of them defore downloading. (left click to listen, Right click to download)


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

I highly recommend Bob van Asperen playing the French Suites (the CD unfortunately is not easy to get, but the performance is phenomenal) and also his more recent Art of Fugue, as well as any of his teacher Gustav Leonhardt's recordings.


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## WildThing (Feb 21, 2017)

There are a couple great sets of Bach's keyboard works on harpsichord that I really enjoy and which are going to cover all your basic needs and them some:

Kenneth Gilbert










Gustav Leonhardt










Outside of this, I like Pierre Hantaï in the Goldberg Variations, Peter Watchorn and Christine Schornsheim in The Well-Tempered Clavier, David Cates in the French Suites, Christophe Rousset in the English Suites, Blandine Verlet in the Inventions and Sinfonias, and Robert Hill in The Art of Fugue.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

What Larkenfield said about the sound of the instrument is the clincher for me. I don't care about the reputation of the player, if it doesn't sound appealing to the ear there's no point in listening.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

I have the Scott Ross Scarlatti set and like it.
Except it seems a little light on the bottom end.
A bass boost really helps.

So I'd like a set with a decent low end if possible


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Kenneth Gilbert's WTC and AoF

Alan Curtis English Suites:





I generally enjoy the harpsichord recordings that were compiled on the Brilliant Classics complete Bach set featuring Christine Schornsheim, Bob van Asperen and Pieter-Jan Belder. Just listened to The French Overture and Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue by the latter last night actually.


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## Josquin13 (Nov 7, 2017)

I'd recommend that you explore the following 13 harpsichordists in Bach's keyboard music;

1. Bob van Asperen--especially his 6 French Suites (which is possibly my favorite recording of these works), Well-Tempered Clavier Books 1 & 2 (another favorite), and Asperen's recent brilliant Art of the Fugue. He's also excellent in the English Suites, Preludes, Goldbergs, Toccatas, Harpsichord Concertos (with Melante Amsterdam), etc.






























2. Christophe Rousset--especially his set of 6 English Suites (which is one of my favorites, next to Asperen's), French Suites, and Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann, which are brilliant recordings. They were all once issued together in a box set by Ambrosie.


















3. Fabio Bonizzoni--I've liked his Goldberg Variations, and Art of the Fugue, on Glossa.










4. Christian Rieger: Art of the Fugue--one of my favorite versions: https://www.allmusic.com/album/js-bach-the-art-of-fugue-mw0001429127

His Bach WTC on YT sounds great, too, & I hope he'll record the whole set one day soon: 




5. Gustav Leonhardt--I've particularly liked his 6 French Suites, and Art of the Fugue.

6. Pascal Dubreuil: 6 Partitas, English Suites, and Clavier-Übung II. These are excellent & beautifully refined performances and very well recorded by Ramee:














7. Pierre Hantai: His two recordings of the Goldberg Variations, on (1) Opus 111 and (2) Mirare, and to a slightly lesser extent, his WTC, Book 1:

Opus 111: 



Mirare: https://www.classicstoday.com/review/review-10070/
WTC, Bk. 1: 




8. Blandine Rannou--I like her soulful, expressive playing of the French and English Suites, and Goldberg Variations:










9. Leon Berben--"Fantasia & Fuge", on Myrios (a label created by the Hagen Quartett): https://www.amazon.com/Fantasia-Fug...=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B003CH8WIU, and an excellent Well-Tempered Clavier Books 1 & 2 on Brilliant. By the way, Berben is a former member of Musica Antiqua Köln.














10. Pieter-Jan Belder--another excellent WTC Books 1 & 2 on Brilliant, particularly his Book 2, and a first rate 6 Partitas--although I'm wasn't 100% crazy about the sound engineering that Brilliant gave Belder for the Partitas, but the playing is exceptional:










11. Yves Rechsteiner--Fantasia Cromatica & Fuga, etc. on Alpha: 




12. Ketil Haugsand (Haugsand is an instrument maker, as well, and the sound of his harpsichord is a bit unusual: so I suspect that it will partly depend on how you respond to his harpsichord, as to whether you'll like his Bach playing, or not. I like his playing.):

Goldbergs: 



6 Partitas: 



Italian Concerto, etc.: 



English Suites: 








& Sonatas for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord (with Laurence Dreyfus): 




13. Peter Watchorn: the Well-tempered Clavier Books 1 & 2 (where he uses Bradley Lehman's different Bach tuning--which is worth hearing, as it changes the WTC in ways that I found very interesting), and the Toccatas.










There are many others, of course, but those are the ones that come to mind at the moment.

Edit: Ah, here are two that I forgot to mention:

Ottavio Dantone--WTC, Book 2: 




Colin Tilney--7 Toccatas:




https://www.amazon.com/J-S-Bach-Toccatas-Johann-Sebastian/dp/B000001Q7Y

As for the harpsichord concertos, I'd strongly recommend a 3 CD complete set on the Plectra label, with harpsichords Davitt Moroney, Arthur Haas, Karen Flint, JungHae Kin, and Adam Pearl performing on antique harpsichords, accompanied by a small chamber group of players on period instruments--which means that the harpsichord part doesn't get drowned out (or become too distant), as happens unless the instrument is closely miked on recordings: which is of course an unnatural amplification:






For bigger band performances, the complete set by Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Soloists on Erato is very good (as is Bob van Asperen's Virgin set, which I've linked to above):














My ten cents.


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