BACH The Four Orchestral Suites, S

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MHS 824464

JOHANN SEBASTIAN

BACH

The Four Orchestral Suites, S. 1066-1069

TRANSCRIBED FOR PIANO DUET BY

MAX REGER

Martin Berkofsky, David Hagan, Pianists

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Johann Sebastian Bach

(1685-1750)

MHS STEREO 824464

The Four Orchestral Suites, S. 1066-1069

are entirely consonant with his symphonic view of music, whether for orchestra, organ, or piano, and he handles the dynamic and expression markings in his arrangements of the Bach suites in much the same way he handled them in his own monumental chorale fan- tasias.

It must be stressed that the tenets of authentic baroque performance practice are as out of place in a performance of the Reger arrangements of Bach/s suites as they would be in a production of Wagner's Die Meister- singer. Reger viewed the Bach suites in much the same way as his good friend Willem Mengelberg (1871-1951), the conductor of the Amsterdam Concert- gebouw Orchestra, who customarily used some 60 strings and five flutes in the tutti passages when he conducted the Suite no. 2 in B minor. So, put double dot- ting, cadential trills, embellishment, and the other trap- pings of baroque performance practice out of mind when listening to the Bach-Reger suites.

Met on their own terms, these arrangements make for a thrilling and thought-provoking listening ex- perience. Start with the Suite no. 3 in D, perhaps the best known of the four. Inside of eight measures you should understand Goethe's reaction to this work, as recalled by Felix Mendelssohn: “He took great delight in the Ouvertire in D by Sebastian Bach, the one with the trumpets, which | played for him on the piano as best as | could. The opening was so pompous and aristocratic, he told me, that one could clearly see a procession of elegantly dressed people descending a grand staircase.”

Suite No. 1 in C Major, S. 1066,

Original instrumentation: 2 oboes, bassoon, strings, and continuo Preserved in a set of parts that date from 1723 or 1724, Bach's first years in Leipzig, the C major Suite was probably composed during Bach's six-year stay in Còthen as Kapellmeister.

Suite No. 2 in B Minor, S. 1067

Original instrumentation: flute, strings, and continuo

A set of parts, some of which are in Bach's handwriting, has survived. While these parts have been dated 1738 or 1739, they may be replacements for an earlier set. While it may have been written for Johann Heinrich Freytag, the court flautist at Còthen, the B minor Suite was probably intended for Pierre Gabriel Buffardin, the court flautist in Dresden.

Suite No. 3 in D Major, S. 1068

Original instrumentation: 3 trumpets, timpani, 2 oboes, strings, and

continuo

An original set of parts, which has been dated 1730 or 1731, has survived for this suite. It was probably writ-

Max Reger

(1873-1916)

ten especially for the concerts of the Collegium Musicum in Leipzig.

Original instrumentation: 3 trumpets, timpani, 3 oboes, bassoon, strings, and continuo

Although no autograph score or original set of parts has survived for this suite, it was composed no later than 1725, the year that Bach remodeled the Overture, turning it into the opening chorus of the Christmas cantata, Unser Mund sei voll Lachens, S. 110. The Suite no.

4 was probably composed at Còthen, or perhaps even earlier in Weimar, but the trumpet and drum parts were probably added to the instrumentation when the work was first performed in Leipzig.

Teri Noel Towe

The fusion of virtuosity, scholarship, profound musicianship and humor brings an air of relaxed informality to the concerts of duo pianists Martin Berkofsky and David Hagan. Friends since their student days at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, where they both studied under Polish virtuoso Mieczyslaw Miinz and the noted scholar Konrad Wolff, their recitals, performances and recordings with orchestras including the Hamburg Symphony, Berlin Symphony, Panama National Symphony and Baltimore Symphony Orchestras, have delighted and entertained audiences. Lively concerts, radio broadcasts and interviews on National Public Radio, as well as recordings for West German Radio, have extended the public's awareness of the varied and exciting repertoire for two pianos and piano duet throughout the United States and in Europe.

Each a distinguished soloist, David Hagan is a member of the piano faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music which he joined as its youngest member in 1968. Recipient of many scholarships, prizes and awards, he received a Stoeckel Fellowship from Yale University for study with the late world-renowned chamber pianist Paul Ulanowsky. An outstanding interpreter of the standard literature, his expertise in avant-garde compositions is also in evidence on Colum- bia Records release in his playing of Pulitzer Prize composer George Crumb's Four Nocturnes: Night Music Il.

Since a 1965 New York debut which prompted a New York Times prediction of “a busy and productive future,” pianist Martin Berkofsky has concertized throughout the United States and Austria, in Ger- ‘ many, and as far north as Iceland. Appearances on radio and televi- sion here and abroad, as well as performances with many: orchestra— Baltimore Symphony (Commissiona), London Symphony (Dorati), National Gallery Orchestra (Bales)— have received critical acclaim. A compelling and expressive pianist as well as a resourceful scholar, Berkofsky's numerous awards include a Casella International Competition prize; a Fulbright Scholarship for study in Vienna under Richard Hauser; a National Music League Young Artists award, and a Sanford Fellowship from the Yale School of Music. His tireless efforts and diligent research in the restoration of Max Bruch's Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra, Op. 88a have resulted in the addition of a major romantic work to the concert and record repertoire. Berkofsky is currently living and performing in Paris.

Manugfactureò by Musical Heritage Society, Inc.

14 Park Roaò, Tinton Falls, NJ. 07724

TRANSCRIBED FOR PIANO DUET BY

SIDE 1

SUITE NO. 1 IN C MAJOR, S. 1066 . Overture

. Courante . Gavottes | & Il

. Forlane (Danza Venezianna) . Menuets | & Il

. Bourrées | & Il . Passepieds | & II

SIDE 2

SUITE NO. 2 IN B MINOR, S. 1067 . Overture

. Rondeau . Sarabande . Bourrées | & Il . Polonaise . Menuet . Badinerie

SIDE 3

SUITE NO. 3 IN D MAJOR, S. 1068 1. Overture

ZA IT

3. Gavottes | & Il 4. Bourrée

5. Gigue

SIDE 4

SUITE NO. 4 IN D MAJOR, S. 1069 1. Overture

2. Bourrées | & II 3. Gavotte

4. Menuet 5. Réjouissance

Martin Berkofsky, David Hagan, Pianists

Timings:

Side 1: 6:04, 2:36, 2:55, 2:10, 2:38, 2:26, 3:36/22:50 Side 2: 7:05, 1:27, 2:30, 1:40, 2:39, 1:04, 1:10/18:10 Side 3: 7:18, 4:25, 3:40, 1:00, 3:30/20:10 Side 4: 7:56, 3:22, 1:44, 3:47, 2:27/19:39

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o 4

» Mastering: Bill Kipper, Masterdisk Corp. | VRDESIT Jacket Design: Sara Breslow

Cover Art: ).S. Bach (left) and Max Reger (courtesy New York Public Library) Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 81-750384

® © Musical Heritage Society, Inc., 1981 Supervising producer: Wesley Horner Produced in the studios of WGBH Radio, Boston.

Engineering: Stephen R. Colby Tape Editing: Joanna Starr Griscom

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Johann Sebastian Bach

(1685-1750)

The Four Orchestral Suites, S. 1066-1069 a

The suite has its origins in the 16th century when printing was in its infancy. To satisfy their employers’

never-ending demands for new music for use at court balls and entertainments, Renaissance Kapellmeisters turned to printed collections of dance music like those published by Pierre Attaingnant in 1529 and 1530.

Dances were grouped together according to type in these anthologies, and a Kapellmeister would assemble a suite of his own choosing and orchestrate the dances to suit the musical forces available to him.

By Bach's day most of the dances in the suite had gone out of fashion and had been stylized. The suite had moved from the ballroom to the banquet hall and concert room. The group of dances was now preceded by an overture, patterned on the form that the influen- tial Jean-Baptiste Lully had developed for the overtures to his operas. These introductory movements have a slow, dotted opening followed by a quick fugal section.

Often the two sections were repeated, and, although it was not Lullys own practice, his followers added a return to the mood of the slow opening section as a coda, giving these overtures a tripartite form that became the standard.

After its introduction there by Lully's pupil, Georg Muffat (1653-1704), the French overture enjoyed a particular vogue in Germany, where the nobility was do- ing its best to emulate the Sun King, Louis XIV, and his court at Versailles. The overture quickly became the dominant movement of the ensemble suite in Ger- many; in fact, ensemble suites came to be called

“Ouvertiiren,” and this was the title that Bach gave to the compositions that we now habitually call the Or- chestral Suites. It is somewhat of an irony, then, that in referring to the Ouvertiires of, Bach, Telemann, and their colleagues as suites we emphasize the dance movements, whereas the composers implicitly stressed the importance of the monumental opening movements by giving works of this kind the title

“Ouvertiùre.”

The length of the overture was further increased by the practice of indicating a repeat of the fugal section and the reprise in the style of the opening dotted segment, thus turning a three-section movement into a five-section one. Bach specifies that these long dal segno al fine repeats are to be made in the opening movements of all four of his suites, and, in his arrangements for piano four hands, Reger follows Bach's instructions. These repeats, however, are rarely observ- ed nowadays, and they are not taken on this recording.

In choosing to ignore these repeats, however, Martin Berkofsky and David Hagan can be said to have a precedent in Bach's own practice. When he reworked the Overture of the Suite no. 4 into the opening chorus of the cantata Unser Mund sei voll Lachens, S. 110,

Max Reger

(1873-1916) Bach also chose to omit this long repeat.

Bach did not write his suites for posterity. Like his cantatas, the suites were composed to fill a practical need, but, while we know the specific Sundays, feast days, and secular or civic occasions for which most of the cantatas were composed, we have no idea for what

particular purposes or occasions the four suites were written. They are occasional pieces and probably were played at dinner parties, balls, or other entertainments given at the courts with which Bach was affiliated either on a full-time basis or ex officio throughout his long career. The suites certainly also figured in the programs of the concerts presented by the Collegium Musicum at the University of Leipzig. Bach directed the concerts of the Collegium Musicum from 1729 through 1737 and again from 1739 to 1741, at least, and perhaps through 1744, when he resigned.

An important part of Bach's library of secular instrumental music, the suites were probably used over and over again, whenever a suitable occasion presented itself, and they were doubtless heard at the parties and receptions at the houses of the wealthy nobles and burghers in Leipzig and Dresden who engaged Bach to provide music for them on a free- lance basis.

None of the suites figures in any of the early listings of Bach's works. Although he knew of their existence and owned the original parts for three of them, Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach (1714-1788) did not bother to include the suites in the catalogue of his father's works that was appended to the obituary notice which he and Johann Friedrich Agricola (1720-1774) prepared for the 1754 volume of the Neueròffnetes Musikbibliothek, published by Lorenz Christoph Mizler (1711-1778). Nor did Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1749-1818), who obtained his information from Carl Philipp Emmanuel and his elder brother Wilhelm Friedemann (1710-1784), mention the suites in the list of compositions in his, the first biography of Johann Sebastian Bach.

No autograph scores survive for any of the four suites. For the first three there are original sets of parts, a few of them in Bach's handwriting, but even these do not permit the certain dating of these compositions because these surviving parts could easily be replacements for earlier ones worn out from frequent use. It has proven impossible, therefore, to say definite- ly when any of the suites was written. AIl that can be said about the origins of the four suites is that none was written before 1713 or after 1744, and that it is most probable that all were composed between 1717 and IM/S9,

While he was progressive enough to adopt elements of the rococo style in some of his own compositions and while he was astute enough to make sure that his

TRANSCRIBED FOR PIANO DUET BY

sons were trained as first-rate, practical “modern” musicians, Bach refused to compromise his basic principles and continued to compose according to the tenets of the by then outmoded late 17th- and early 18th-century styles that he had learned as a young man. At the time of his death on July 28, 1750, Bach was therefore a musical woolly mammoth, a last specimen of an extinct breed of composer. Admired only by a handful of cognoscenti and by those who had had the good for- tune to study with him, he slipped into obscurity, remembered only as a supreme keyboard virtuoso and displaced in the public's mind by, among others, his sons Carl Philipp Emmanuel and John Christian (1735-1782).

Hard as it may be to believe now, the Brandenburg Concerti — perhaps Bach's best known instrumental compositions today — were first published in 1850, and with the exception of no. 3, none of the suites was published until 1853-54, when the first three were issued by C.F. Peters; the fourth did not appear until 1881! The Suite no. 3 in D, S. 1068, was the only orchestral work of Bach's that was published before 1850.

Under the title “Sinfonia,” it was printed in Paris in VOLE

It was also the only one of the orchestral works to figure in Felix Mendelssohn's pioneering concerts. In 1838 he included this suite on a program of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and in 1844 he conducted the work at a concert of the Philharmonic Society in Lon- don. For those performances, Mendelssohn altered the trumpet parts to make them playable on “modern?” instruments; he also added two clarinets in the Gigue.

That Mendelssohn felt it necessary to tamper with the trumpet parts provides a clue to one of the reasons for the obscurity of Bach's orchestral music in the 19th century.

The second half of the 18th century was a period of great change in Euope, and neither music nor musical instruments were immune. Concerts moved from the chambers and ballrooms of the nobility to public concert halls. The gradually increasing size of these halls meant not only larger orchestras and choruses but also a constant clamor for louder and “better” instruments equipped with keys and valves to extend the ranges of the instruments, provide for greater accuracy of pitch, and facilitate playing technique. Together with the old instruments, the conventions of baroque performance practice also disappeared. By 1860 the sound of the symphony orchestra and the grand piano were firmly established in the ears of musicians and music lovers alike.

Played by orchestras several times as large as the

‘ chamber ensembles for which he wrote them, made up of musicians who interpreted his scores according to

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the performance practice of their era, not his, and who used instruments that were the “replacements” for the instruments that he had known, Bach's_ orchestral music and his instrumental accompaniments sounded thick and heavy. The piano was used as the continuo instrument, if there was one at all; as often as not, the continuo, and thus the realization of the figured bass, was dispensed with altogether. .

Bach's accompaniments were adjusted to suit the logistics of the modern orchestra. Robert Franz (1815-1892), a prominent German organist, made concert editions of the St. Matthew Passion, S. 244, the Magnificat, S. 243, the Trauer Ode, S. 198, and 10 cantatas, in which he provided substitutes for the parts written for the old instruments as well as additional accompaniments for wind instruments that replaced the keyboard realization of the figured basso continuo;

these editions were widely used for nearly half a century.

In addition, the 19th century molded Bach's per- sonality and the sound of his music to suit romantic ideals and valùes. Franz Liszt, the ne plus ultra of composer-virtuosi, took Bach's organ works onto the recital stage, playing them in transcriptions for solo piano that accurately reproduce the essence and the shape of Bach's writing while reworking it to suit the concert grand piano and its technique as Liszt ex- ploited it.

Both Liszt's transcriptions of Bach's organ works as solo piano pieces and Robert Franz's performing editions of Bach's sacred compositions with their added accompaniments are arrangements for instrumenta- tions different from the original ones, and so, for that matter, were performances for the harpsichord concerti in which a large body of strings accompanied a soloist playing a modern grand piano, but at the time it was necessary, from the practical point of view, to present the music in this way. In fact, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, before the phonograph had been developed into the commercially viable proposition that it eventually became, arrangements were about the only way that a music lover could hear and study compositions that, for whatever reason, were rarely presented at public concerts.

Furthermore, in the days before movies, radio, televi- sion, and other types of nonparticipatory entertain- ment, music making in the home was an especially popular pastime, and publishers did a land-office business in arrangements and transcriptions of orchestral and chamber music made specifically for use at home. The presence of the piano in so many households made arrangements for piano four hands particularly popular. No form of music making is more congenial — two people jockeying for position on the piano bench, vying politely for control of the pedals and thus the phrasing, while playing through original piano duet pieces and transcriptions for piano four hands of instrumental orchestral and operatic scores.

The line between arrangements designed exclusively for home use and those suitable for the recital stage and concert hall was extremely indistinct, and many of the arrangements ostensibly designed for home use, especially when made by well-known composers, pro- ve to be effective concert vehicles and present technical and interpretive challenges that put them®

beyond the reach of all but the most accomplished

musicians, whether professional or amateur.

By the waning years of the 19th century, the first seeds of the revival of interest in old instruments and authentic performance practice had been sown. The programs of the second annual Bach Festival of the Neue Bach Gesellschaft, held in Leipzig in 1904, shows that the harpsichord was already being used as a continuo instrument in works like the Suite no. 4 in D, S.

1069, but the solo parts in the Harpsichord Concerto in D, S. 1054, and the Concerto or Three Harpsichords in D minor, S. 1063, were played on concert grand pianos.

Such was the atmosphere throughout the career of Max Reger, who was regarded by his countrymen and many others as the greatest composer of organ music since Bach. Reger idolized Bach from childhood, and Bach was to remain an important inspiration for him throughout his life. As a student of Hugo Riemann, a

MARTIN BERKOFSKY (left) and DAVID HAGAN

lexicographer who was Germany's answer to Sir George Grove and one of the two or three finest Ger- man organists of his generation, Reger was a brilliant contrapuntist who had the highest respect and admira- tion for Bach's part writing and voice leading.

Like most of his contemporaries, however, Reger conceived of Bach in terms of the late 19th century. He hated the harpsichord fervently, and though he often played Bach harpsichord concerti on the piano in public, he would have nothing to do with the conclu- sions of the musicologists concerning the “proper” performance of Bach's music. His name, for instance, is conspicuously absent from the membership rolls of the

Neue Bach Gesellschaft, to which many of his distinguished contemporaries, including his close friends, the organist Karl Straube and the violinist Henri Marteau, belonged.

For Reger, the medium for Bach's organ works was one of the large symphonic pneumatic action organs of Wilhelm Sauer, not a pure, tracker action instrument by Arp Schnitger or Gottfried Silbermann. The op- timum ensemble for Bach's orchestral works was not a chamber group of a dozen or so players but a full symphony orchestra.

These attitudes could not help but color Reger's ap- proach to the process of arranging Bach's music. An in-

veterate arranger, Reger made a number of transcriptions of Bach's music. While in his early twenties and still a student at the advanced level with Riemann in Wiesbaden, Reger made two sets of arrangements, one for solo piano and the other for piano four hands, of organ works by Bach. These transcriptions were among the sheaf of compositions that Reger sent to Brahms, whose response was favorable and supportive.

Among Regers other Bach arrangements is a transcription of the chorale prelude, “O Mensch, be- wein' dein’ Sinde gross,” S. 622 which still turns up from time to time on string orchestra programs. In 1907, the same year that his arrangements of the suites appeared, Reger published his transcription for organ of the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D minor, S. 903 and there is also a Suite in G minor for full orchestra that is a compendium of transcriptions of movements from the English Suites, S. 806-811 and the Partitas, S.

825-830.

Like his four-hand arrangements of the Brandenburg Concerti, Reger's transcriptions of the suites present ex- traordinary technical difficulties for the performers.

There are numerous places where the left hand of the first pianist has to go over or under the right hand of the second pianist. At first blush, it would seem that such technically awkward passages could have been written in other ways to achieve the same result without caus- ing the players so much anxiety, but Reger, a brilliant polyphonist, tried to avoid tampering with Bach's part writing or his voice leading. The arrangements are particularly faithful to Bach's originals in this regard, and those who know the suites well will take particular pleasure in picking out the inner voices, the in- dependence and integrity of which Reger went to great lengths to preserve.

Doublings at the lower octave are used extensively but carefully in these arrangements in order to suggest the double basses playing along with the cellos an octave lower than written. Reger's use of the hoary old device of octave tremolos to create the aura of the ket- tledrum rolls in the Overture to the Suite no. 3 is

nothing short of masterful. He hardly ever resorts to the device of octave transposition, using it, as he had to much greater extent in his arrangements of the Brandenburg Concerti, only to highlight a voice that might otherwise get swamped within the complex pianistic texture. For instance, 22 bars before the end of the fugato in the Overture to the Suite no. 1, Reger brings out the first oboe part by doubling it briefly at the upper octave. The passage may be extremely difficult to play, but Reger achieves his goal of making certain that an important entry of the theme of the fugato is not missed.

Bach provided few tempo markings in the suites, and Reger fills in his own at almost every opportunity; in a couple of places he alters the indications that Bach did provide, and occasionally changes the spelling of the titles of the various dances. Not withstanding his respect for Bach's voice leading and part writing, Reger does not hesitate to change what few dynamic and phrase markings there are in Bach's originals and substitute his own. Reger considered the structure of a composition to be a means to an end, unlike Bach, who often emphasized the architecture of his compositions by registration or instrumentation, and terrace dynamics. As a result, Reger's phrasings and dynamics

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STEREO

\ SEBASTIAN BACH

JOHANI

RCHESTRAL SUITES, S. 1066-1069

i THE FOUR ORCH

TRANSCRIBED FOR PIANO DUET BY MAX REGER

MHS 4464 (P4244-10)]

SIDE "1 33 1/3 RPM

Suite No. 1 in C Major, S. 1066 Tad

1. Overture; 2. Courante; 3. Gavottes | & il;

4. Forlane (Danza Venezianna); 5. Menuets | & Il;

6. Bourrees | & Il; 7. Passepieds | & Il

Martin Berkofsky, David Hagan, Pianists

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STEREO

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

THE FOUR ORCHESTRAL SUITES, S. 1066-1 069 TRANSCRIBED FOR PIANO DUET BY MAX REGER

(Ro: F6LK0)]

MHS 4464 33 1/3 RPM

SIDE 2

Suite No. 2 in B Minor, S. 1067

1. Overture: 2. Rondeau; 3. Sarabande; 4. Bourrées | & Il;

5. Polonaise; 6. Menuet; 7. Badinerie

Martin Berkofsky, David Hagan, Pianists (QNGNVINSRA AIA diet SISTINA 19817

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Fagzi0)

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BA ua TT NS ESSE CECO) TRANSCRIBED FOR PIANO DUET BY MAX RE

1. Overture; 2. Air; 3. Gavottes | & Il; 4. Bourrée;

5. Gigue

Martin Berkofsky, David Hagan, Pianists

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STEREO

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

THE FOUR ORCHESTRAL SUITES, S. 1066-1069 TRANSCRIBED FOR PIANO DUET BY MAX REGER

MHS 4465 (19:39)

SIDE 4 33 1/3 RPM

1. Overture; 2. FONOCCS 1 & II; 3. Gavotte;

4. Menuet; 5. Rejouissance È

Martin Berkofsky. David Hagan, Pianists QRONYISEI Heritage Society, Inc., 1981