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Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier – BWV 731 [video]

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Re: Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier – BWV 731 [video]

#81
This thread is turning into a set of recommendations related to Bach. So here's mine.

Zhu Xiao Mei is a Chinese pianist who teaches in Paris. She grew up during the Great Leap Forward and spent 5 years in a reeducation camp, never giving up her spirit and illegally importing her parents' "bourgeois" piano at great risk to her and their life, via friends doing her favours, storing and playing it in a freezer. Teachers stored the Western scores that had been banned by Madam Mao in a room on the 3rd floor which they never dared visit again.

Out of the camp, she emigrated to the US at the merest sign of the border opening, having heard Western playing and realised the gulf that stood between her understanding of what great music was and what was actually possible. She did small jobs like cleaning houses to survive until she ended up in Paris where she was noticed and her career could take off. [1]

She discovered Bach's Goldberg Variations almost by accident. The person in whose house she was staying could not stand hearing piano being practiced, except for that piece, so that's what she practiced for hours every day, gradually learning it inside out, and it became her favourite piece. Her performance on an Asia tour shocked a friend by its sensitivity and wisdom and he recommended it to me. Maybe you need something a little different from Gould.

I recommend reading the book before listening to her playing the Variations [2], there is an entire world in that performance and the knowledge makes it more personal.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Piano-Labor-Goldberg-Variation...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0F5VRgKK1g

Re: Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier – BWV 731 [video]

#86
post #39

Perhaps relevant: http://www.opengoldbergvariations.org/

I know I'm slowly going off topic here. :) But check out the Glenn Gould version, as well. Also Jacques Loussier has some nice Bach interpretations.

> Also Jacques Loussier has some nice Bach interpretations.

Now that's a name I really never expected here. Seconded!

Re: Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier – BWV 731 [video]

#87

I love seeing this on HN! I'm particularly fond of Bach's cello suites but I'm probably biased since I'm a cellist. http://allofbach.com/en/bwv/bwv-1010/

May I ask why you love it to be on HN? Sure, there have been lots of posts on HN over the years that I thought were borderline OT but for this I really don't see the connection to HN... But, in order to avoid tons of downvotes, I'd be happy to accept a good argument for why this should totally be here and not just, say, on Reddit.

Re: Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier – BWV 731 [video]

#88
post #33

I used to play the pipe organ before becoming a software engineer. Bach's works are like living inside of a multi-threaded algorithm in real time. You can understand/appreciate a lot of them from a high level without knowing what they really are doing as implementation details. Some people even can play his pieces just with muscle-memory. But if you try to fully understand as a composer what he is doing in any piece,…

I appreciate the complexity and ingenuity of Bach's compositions, but I can't really enjoy listening to them. I always feel like I'm missing out. So occasionally I try to get into it again, but I fail every time. edit: talking about the organ works here

This is probably a style choice thing, which I understand. While I consider Bach the best of the Baroque style (although there are a lot of worthy composers in that era), I personally often find that style a bit rigid (it relied pretty heavily on a well defined set of voice leading rules, fairly strict counterpoint, etc.). Some Bach pieces (and other Baroque composers) are great for my personal tastes nonetheless, but my personal preference for music tends to come from late Romantic to early "modern" era composers.

I can easily see why programmers could get into Bach though, or other pieces that show amazing contrapuntal / strict voice leading type skills in particular -- that type of music skill is very "head oriented" / logic oriented to me.

Re: Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier – BWV 731 [video]

#89
post #14

Just before seeing this on HN I was listening to Buxtehude's organ works on my way home. Buxtehude was one of the main inspirations for Bach as a composer¹, and I always find it interesting to go back and forth. But there's a reason Bach is the one that has come to be a superstar - there's the huge number of surviving works, of course, and in many ways how "the student surpassed the master", not least in contrapuncta…

I really like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u_027bHRlM

I'm not really a religious music person, but the vocal harmonies are not quite the Bach fugue levels of mathematical (I think?), but really just stunning. Especially the female vocal together with the organ and cello? after 3:00ish. So minimal, but so many details.

Re: Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier – BWV 731 [video]

#90
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I'm slowly going off topic here. :) But check out the Glenn Gould version, as well. Also Jacques Loussier has some nice Bach interpretations.

> Also Jacques Loussier has some nice Bach interpretations. Now that's a name I really never expected here. Seconded!

Might I recommend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oTxrk9HooI
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