Richter plays Bach
Nov. 24th, 2007 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylI find Bach's C-minor passacaglia utterly and endlessly fascinating; the way it takes a simple theme in the pedals and pushes it through a serious increasingly clever variations, even breaking the rules and moving the theme from the bass into the uppermost voice. Thus, I was delighted to find that YouTube have a film of Karl Richter playing it in the rococco splender of Ottobeuren Abby. Even though the sound's not all that great, it's worth watching just to see a master going through his paces:
It's interesting to see how much work Richter and his assistant have to do to compensate for the lack of a combined action. There's a moment — just before variation eighteen? — when the assistant goes into a frenzy of stop pulling to get the registration right for climax of the piece. Fascinating.
It's interesting to see how much work Richter and his assistant have to do to compensate for the lack of a combined action. There's a moment — just before variation eighteen? — when the assistant goes into a frenzy of stop pulling to get the registration right for climax of the piece. Fascinating.
