The French Suite at Six Months

I began working on Bach's French Suite, No. 6 in E Major last September. With two months off to work on my December 2007 concert program, I've now been working on the pieces for six months. Below are links to sound files for the works recorded at the end of April. My mentors for the project have been Tamara Loring and Bruce Potterton.



http://renditionsmusic.com/allemande_22-Apr-2008.mp3

http://renditionsmusic.com/courante_22-Apr-2008.mp3

http://renditionsmusic.com/sarabande_25-Apr-2008.mp3

http://renditionsmusic.com/gavotte_22-Apr-2008.mp3

http://renditionsmusic.com/polonaise_25-Apr-2008.mp3

http://renditionsmusic.com/bourree_22-Apr-2008.mp3

http://renditionsmusic.com/gigue_22-Apr-2008.mp3

Of course, I'm not done with this project. I hope now to begin to perform the French Suite and to continue to refine and perfect my playing of these remarkable pieces.

Ah Ha!

While recording the Sarabande today...I had one of those "duh" moments. In my lessons with Tamara she kept asking me for more sound when I played the Sarabande. We tried adding pedal, rolling the chords slower, just playing louder --- nothing was working. She told me that my left hand kept disappearing while I was playing. Today I realized what was missing. I've been forgetting that my left hand is a voice as well! I was thinking of my left hand as accompaniment partly because of playing the chords without ornamentation to fix my rhythm problems and to clearly hear the harmony. As one of my other teachers, Eliane Lust, always says ---- "for every solution there is another problem" and in this case, I my left hand was not an equal voice with my right. Now I hope my left hand begins to sing as boldly as my right hand.



http://renditionsmusic.com/sarabande_25-Apr-2008.mp3

Recording the Gigue

At long last a sample of the Gigue!

http://renditionsmusic.com/gigue_22-Apr-2008.mp3

In trying to articulate the left hand, there is some unintentional slowing of the tempo. In general my left hand does not seem to be to comfortable when the right hand has trills or sixteenth notes. It is time to:

1. work the left hand alone;
2. practice the left hand louder than the right;
3. lighten up my right hand; and
4. slowly put the tricky passages back together.

Then will all be right with the Gigue?

Glenn Gould

And now clips of a master playing the French Suite in E Major No. 6!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwV_Tul1Ywc (everything but the Gigue)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O16VtyoxKM (just the Gigue for some reason)

Live Performance of the Sarabande

http://renditionsmusic.com/sarabande_04-06-08

On Sunday, April 6, I played the Sarabande at a private piano salon. I recorded the work on a small voice recorder to close to the piano (on my friend Bill Serbin's fantastic 9 foot Steinway that is a joy to play) so again I apologize for the sound quality. I managed to put in some of the feeling that I want with this piece, however, my rhythmic integrity suffered.