David Korevaar | blog

Looking back, now that the boxes of CDs nested in their cellophane cocoons with their lovely blue booklets are a fait accompli, the time I’ve spent with Bach’s Partitas has been ear opening, mind expanding—a wonderful learning experience. Yesterday I performed the first Partita for a small, appreciative, and attentive audience in a salon in Japan, and enjoyed re-creating this music once again. Each performance, as I am still learning, has the potential to be its own wonderful adventure. Especially with this repertoire, I feel like I am living and breathing with the music, creating a new organism with each time I begin. No two performances come out the same—different ornaments demand to be heard, articulations are more or less sharply characterized, arpeggios move with a life of their own, the inner voice of the dance asks to be introduced in a different way.

I posted a couple of brief explanatory videos about my approach to the Partitas on YouTube the other day ( on Articulation and Expression and Sinfonia of Bach's Second Partita), and a user responded with a lovely comment about Bach: “I have always found it hard to believe that the mind which produced these wonderful works could have been as rigid as modern interpretations suggest and conservatories demand!”

It makes me think: what do we as teachers demand? What do we as performers do? Do we make our students brave enough to defy what they think is the received wisdom? After all, we professor types talk a good game about projecting the character of the music, and yet students are shy about really doing it. I have a hard enough time being self-confident enough to free myself of the need to be “correct.” After all, with our classical training, we’ve been indoctrinated since childhood into the cult of playing the right notes and the right rhythms; what happens to that when we try to give ourselves permission to improvise? It is unsettling to throw yourself in harm’s way: what if the spontaneously generated ornament or figure fails to spin properly? What if those notes on the piano won’t respond quickly enough? Even worse, what if I fall out of the pulse or the harmony while making something up?

Beyond the philosophy of recording lies the problem of performing. As I wrote in the CD booklet for the Partitas, “In recording the Partitas, I have sought the freedom of live performance. The recording sessions were an opportunity to produce multiple versions of the individual movements, experimenting with embellishments, pacing, and the subtleties of rhythmic treatment that bring these dance-inspired pieces to life. I wanted the result to feel spontaneous—a snapshot of the moment of performance, rather than the definitive last word.”

Of course, performance is the real thing; recording is inherently artificial, frozen, each play the same. But the experience of trying things repeatedly in recording sessions (after a great deal of preparation to develop an appropriate vocabulary of embellishments) has made me more willing to take risks in performance. I have nothing but admiration for someone like Robert Levin who manages to both produce high-level scholarly investigations of embellishment and extemporize in the musical language of the late eighteenth century to an equally high standard. That level of intellectual and physical fluency represents a kind of genius I can only aspire to—something like bilingualism, or at least the gift for multi-lingual fluency (written as I continue to try to function in Japanese at even a rudimentary level after more than twenty years of travel to Japan).

So, my recorded versions of Bach’s Partitas are cocooned in their packages, the ephemeral moments of music and improvisation captured in one version, ready to spread their colorful wings the same way a thousand times. But I will go on and continue to perform this and lots of other music. And no two performances will be the same, no two sets of wings identical in color and pattern. And I hope I am daring enough to be spontaneous no matter what I am playing, and that I can inspire my students at least to do the same: performers shouldn’t just re-create the music, they should transform it.

In the midst of the not-quite-last part of a full, rich summer, I’m in the countryside along the English-Welsh border working on a recording project with my wonderful friends and colleagues, violist Geri Walther and cellist Andras Fejer of the Takács Quartet. We’re recording the Brahms Clarinet Trio (with the composer-sanctioned viola part in place of the clarinet) and the two Brahms sonatas for viola and piano (originally for clarinet as well). Our production team we are working with, Andrew Keener (producer) and Simon Eadon (engineer), make everything seem easy.

This is my second time working with this technical team and this venue (Wyastone Leys). The last project, two Beethoven violin sonatas with Ed Dusinberre (also of the Takács Quartet), was a great success in every way.

The role of the producer is interesting to me. We assume that classical musicians go into the studio, play through the music a few times; and, after a few magical edits, the project is done. While that describes the process at a simple level, the reality is more complex. The producer is part of the artistic team, helping to coax and cajole the best possible artistic result from the performer(s). Not only does he have to be attentive to obvious things like wrong notes or rhythms, out of tune moments and ensemble flaws, he also must be able to imagine the final result and make sure that all of the parts of a beautiful, musical performance are available for assembly into the final product. This requires someone with intrinsically musical and artistic expertise. And in a chamber music recording, the producer also has to be a teacher and a diplomat, able to gently steer the performers and handle the ever-changing interpersonal dynamics of the group.

 Andrew, our producer, is certainly one of the best in the recording industry, with vast experience working with soloists, chamber groups, and orchestras. With him, we know we are in good hands, and can trust his judgment on a wide range of issues technical and musical. I find myself always encouraged to do my best (to do better than perhaps I could have imagined), often in subtle ways. A wonderful and easy collaboration with my fellow musicians (“esteemed colleagues,” as our cellist Andras likes to say) is enhanced and deepened through Andrew's thoughtful participation in the process. And Simon, our engineer, somehow captures the most beautiful sound imaginable! I am struck during playback by the warmth and presence that I am hearing—it is a kind of magic to think that the music sounds better on the playback than when you are playing it yourself!

It's the ambience of this beautiful and quiet countryside of the Wye Valley that completes the special experience of this project. Brahms was a composer who enjoyed his summers in the countryside, and one can’t help but think that he would have appreciated this place, where the loudest nighttime sounds are the bleating of the sheep behind the hotel.  It is a pleasure to be able to explore the area on foot (running or walking) and enjoy the rolling hills of the Welsh borderlands. 

Last week I recorded Bach’s Six Partitas. The sessions went beautifully—the hall, my home field, so to speak, was Grusin Music Hall at the University of Colorado; the piano was CU’s best concert grand, brought up to recording standard by Robert Cloutier, our head piano technician. I brought in an old friend and longtime colleague, Richard Price of Candlewood Digital, from Connecticut to produce the sessions.

After three days of intense work, and few interruptions (only a loud drill putting in new water lines under Broadway on our last day), Richard and I are confident that there is plenty of wonderful material to work with for the next phase of the project. Richard, as producer, will put together what he thinks are the best versions of each movement of each Partita. I have often  made my own selections for recordings, but I prefer to do it this way: to be able to listen with fresh ears after a couple of months have passed and hear what the producer has selected.

One of my challenges of this project was to be sure I was well prepared to play the pieces in multiple versions. One of the producer’s challenges will be to choose from these multiple possibilities, to make sure that the best improvisations in the repeats end up on the final master. After intensely preparing for the recording sessions for a year, I now look forward to having a little distance from the Partitas (except for the Fifth, which I am performing a couple of times during the summer).

In just a few days, I’ll begin recording the six Bach Partitas. I spent the last three days focused on a completely different project—a recording with Clavier Trio of Brahms, Haydn, and Schoenfield piano trios. We worked in the beautiful acoustics of Ed Landreth Auditorium at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, where our cellist, Jesus Castro-Balbi, is a professor. Recording chamber music is challenging because all three players have to be satisfied with their performances at the same time—in tune, musical, with the right articulations, and together.

Before I can sit down and record the Bach, I still have a weekend ahead of performing the Rachmaninoff Paganini Rhapsody with the Fort Collins Symphony in Colorado with Wes Kenney. And after the Bach recordings, I’ll be rapidly shifting gears once again in order to focus on Brahms with my colleagues Geraldine Walther and Andras Fejer.

Somehow, this kind of variety helps me focus on my work. I’ve never been particularly content to work on one thing at a time. And, since I’ve been preparing for the Bach recording project for over a year now, I’ve had ample time to let the music settle in. This morning, I went over the Sixth Partita, thinking about pacing, ornamentation, sound, and security. I’ve memorized all of this music, although I will have scores close at hand throughout the sessions. I find that I can listen better when I’m not having to look at the score. (In fact, I was surprised during the trio recordings this week at how many times I was not looking at the score while we recorded, even though I had a page turner present and could have been reading from the music the whole time.) With Bach, the fugal Gigues are particularly challenging to perform from memory, and I sometimes find myself second-guessing my own knowledge of the score while playing. It will be interesting to see what balance I end up striking in the recording sessions between using score and not using score—it’s hard to predict, in fact.

Another factor that is hard to predict is how I will respond in the moment to the piano and the hall. Although I’m recording in a very familiar locale for me, Grusin Music Hall at the University of Colorado, I know that I listen differently in recording sessions than at any other time. Recordings bring on a hyper-awareness of sound and silence, an intensified sense of the length and endings of notes, along with a sense of responsibility and finality about the interpretation that can be both inspiring and inhibiting.

My colleague Patrick Mason gave a wonderful commencement address at the University of Colorado College of Music last week. He talked about education, life, and professional situations in terms of hurdles to be leapt. And he finished with a wonderful narration of what it’s like to see the next hurdle—to accelerate, to run, to prepare to jump. I’m looking forward to my leaping this inspiring hurdle of Bach next week. I can’t quite see what lies on the other side yet!

In just a few weeks, I’ll sit down at the piano in the University of Colorado’s Grusin Music Hall, and begin recording Bach’s Six Partitas. As I’ve planned and prepared for this project, I’ve given plenty of thought to it. The first question to ask, of course, is why? Does the world need another recording of this music? Do we need another recording of these pieces conceived in the eighteenth century to be played on the harpsichord?

Obviously, I believe that the answers are yes, but it’s hard not to feel like the whole endeavor is an act of hubris or pure vanity. It’s easy enough to be intimidated by great repertoire, and by all the great performances that already exist. I’ve had the pleasure of listening to many recordings, and of enjoying many of them. Even after that, I think I bring something of my own to the table—something that I want to share with an audience. This music is filled with humanity. One of the great musical minds of history bent his will to summing up courtly dance music in stylized versions for keyboard. The result is a fascinating mix of dance, song, and intellect.

And I hope to contribute an essentially human performance. One of the hardest things to capture in recordings of classical repertoire is the sense of improvisation, the spontaneity of the inspiration of a moment. In our search for perfection of execution, we lose sight of the real reason for the music in the first place.

One of our doctoral students in piano, Pia Bose, recently gave a presentation that introduced me to the concept of “embodied perception” –something that the Swiss composer Frank Martin derived from his work with Dalcroze and the concepts behind eurhythmics. I thought this was a wonderful connection with all music, of course, but with the dance suites of the Baroque era in particular. After all, what is it to play a Bach Courante or Sarabande, but to embody the idea of the dance, and to have the sense of improvising a melody, of ornamenting the rhythm and harmony, to bring the spirit of the bodily motion inherent in the swing of the dance to life?

So, going into these recording sessions, I need to practice what? I need to practice making the music up each time I play through it. I need to develop a repertoire of breathing, of rhythmic choices, of rhythmic understanding to encompass the range of expression inherent in, for example, a dotted rhythm. How rich this music is in different kinds of dotted rhythms, none of which really should sound precisely the same. I need to have the courage to employ the slight swing of the French notes inégales, where evenly notated scales are given a charm and expression by making them uneven. It is hard for us as “classically trained” musicians to let go of our adherence to a pedantic reading of a score. It is liberating to see that even shortly after the publication of Bach’s Partitas, members of his circle were adding notes and ornament to the “original.” In fact, the vaunted Urtext is provisional—it is only the momentary state of the music at the time that the composer put it down. Every performer and performance creates a different state. Performance and recording require the courage and strength to be free.