Friday 23 April 2010

SEGOVIA, GAVOTTING AT MIDNIGHT, PROBABLY HIS BEST KNOWN BACH PIECES.

8 comments:

mrs narcolept said...

Utterly astonishing, what some people can do with a guitar.

By the way, that Ry Cooder, what was it he was playing? Channelling so much through what looked to me like a tin ukelele, as if he would have exploded without it.

call me ishmael said...

Segovia plays Bach was the first guitar record I bought, mrs n, back in the day.

I believe it was a form of mandolin and yes, the energy level was frightening. Cooder is one of those, the touched ones, connected.

As mr elby said, he is a walking library of ethnic American musical forms, the Rolling Stones major albums and thus their forty year career are just a shameless rip-off of an open tuning which Cooder showed them in the studio, unknown to him they recorded it, worked it up into Honky Tonk Women and have never looked back. Or forward.

Rasmus said...

I wish I could play the clarinet like that.

Rasmus said...

I wish I could play the clarinet like that.

mongoose said...

Playing Bach on a guitar? Jeez, ye savages, ye!

Does anyone else remember the late-at-night white-dot BBC2 (?) piano preludes? There were countless of them - spare and beautiful - various known and unknown pianists. I cannot find them anywhere.

call me ishmael said...

Funny, mr m. it was a choice between the Segovia and the Rostropovich, the former had the better sound and vision quality. I think those bits were written for the lute, anyway, weren't they?

BBC 2 was, quite recently, a year or two back, doing similar, spare and beautiful, unknown virtuoso performances; broadcast last thing at night they were recorded in fabulous, European Baroque buildings and broadcast without any comment from twittering arts presenters; I am sure they will be back.

mongoose said...

Those are the beasts, Mr Ishmael. No nonsense - title on screen, then pianist plays it, end.

Organist wasn't he, Bach? Did they have pianos then? Maybe they didn't.

call me ishmael said...

Sometimes the bBC does intervene between the audience and the Art to great purpose - the Baroque series with Waldemar Jabberwocky and the recent Spanish and Russian Arts series, for istance - but often, particularly at the Proms, they just provide an opportunity for someone's niece or mistress or rentboy to show off.

I think they had a fortepiano then, as well as the plucked harpsichord and the pipe organ, the piano as we know it is more recent.