The Significance of Bach

I consider it a great mission to carry Bach's church music out of the church, to make its message available to many people, to explain it, and to perform it. For this purpose, it needs a sound that gives a clear picture of the work without any sort of symphonic or historical distortion. I perform with an ensemble of essentially chamber dimensions, the size of which takes into account the facts of Bach's performance practice while allowing for our larger, and very often drier, halls. The soprano and alto parts are sung by women, and the orchestra makes use of the usual modern instruments. With this ensemble I attempt to make emotionally relevant and timely what 1, through analysis and reflection, believe Bach wished to communicate. In this way, the historical distance between speaker and hearer is bridged as much as possible.

At the same time, each performance should have a character as if it were the only one. I hope very much that it will always be possible for me to see new and undiscovered elements in works that I and others perform often, so that their manifestation in sound will change, and the direction of their message will shift. This is true also of the complete recording of the Bach vocal works, the conclusion of which we celebrate this year. These recordings as well, made over a period of fifteen years with a spirit of involvement and emotion at each and every recording session, never establish a final level of understanding, but reflect the understanding of the moment. The fact that I would do many things differently, even in the case of very recent recordings, seems to me not to be something negative, but rather evidence of the multifaceted spirituality of Bach's music.

It is under this heading of "multi-facetedness" that I would like my interpretive approach as well included in the ongoing history of the music of J. S. Bach.... I would like to hope and wish that the hearing with interest of Bach's music, the hearing with interest of the tradition of the Christian West that lives in this music, might in the years that lie ahead of us be a criterion for quality, a stimulus for creativity, and for many, a personal enrichment and deepening of the reality of their lives.

Back to the First Page

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19