Many decades ago, the Lenten discipline even among us (non fasting) Lutherans spilled into Easter morning as this used always to be the first hymn of Easter Sunday & our organist always played BWV 625 before or at the end of Service. So I always saw the majestic joy of this piece. Thank you for bringing back wonderful memories.
Just an hour before discovering this in my RU-vid feed, I decided to start work on this piece tomorrow! So you can understand how thrilled I was to watch this episode. Tim always finds a new angle from which to approach each Prelude and I was particularly struck by his reference to the pedalboard on the Roeder organ and his remark about the use of the heel and toe - perhaps because this is something I've been thinking about recently. I did so enjoy Tim's choice of tempo here and his general point about how such organs force one to think about articulation. A great episode.
@@timrishton5871 So...on first play through it didn't seem too intimidating. I worked out the pedalling using the heel where necessary. It is only when you look closely at the manual parts that real difficulties emerge. Let's assume that one's aim is to achieve a cantabile line in the upper voice. For the same reason as one uses the heel in the pedal. This entails serious thought about the disposition of the parts between the hands and, I would maintain, some paired fingering. It becomes a maze, a labyrinth. So this piece is much more challenging than it appears. Any thoughts also - from fellow commentators?
@@monsieurgrignyYes, full of little details! But the comfort is that the expectation was that those inner parts are not legato. You can at any rate freely change hand position immediately before the first in each group of 4 semiquavers. But I tend to think that this piece calls for those inner semiquavers to be articulated in pairs (all sorts of things suggest that to me - the "largo" feel, the fact that the harmonic rhythm frequently goes in quavers and the general layout of the figuration) which again means that you can adjust hand position every other semiquaver. The same goes for the pedals, by the way - we don't need to be legato between the upbeat and the main beat, which means that we can use the same foot if we want. (So for instance I would tend to use left toe for the first and second pedal notes in the piece). That all makes life a little easier ... Tim
@@timrishton5871Thank you so much for that considered, in-depth reply. Later, I will take a critical look at my fingering and pedalling in the light of what you have said.
@@monsieurgrigny No problem - good luck with it all! I ramble on a bit about both fingering and pedalling in the relevant sections of my general introduction to chorale preludes on ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hPN6AEm2hno.html Tim
Yes, the piece copes well with a variety of tempi. It is, of course, a hymn of Easter rejoicing, and as I mention in the text we need to balance the semiquaver movement with the need to project the chorale melody in such a way that it will maintain its integrity, so it's not always easy to find just the perfect tempo. Great that you're thinking critically about these things!
@@timrishton5871 often times musicians become numb to the feel of a song… I speak from my own experience. I would practice peices over and over until there was no technical difficulties involved and then I would wiz right through the price and some people would complain that I’ve played it too quickly. It annoyed me cuz I felt like I knew better and they were on phyciatric medication or something.
@@timrishton5871 Thanks, I've been looking forward to this one. I like the faster tempo, but then always find myself wanting more space to hear the suspensions in the closing bars - reminiscent of those in the cantata BWV 4, where Bach takes all the time he needs for the extremely bittersweet 'halleluja's ( ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-3ffg4mU7FNE.html )
@@ChrisGJohnson Really great comparison with the cantata of the same title - thank you. Those suspensions you mention, though, are in the movement "Den Tod niemand zwingen kunnt" which says that no person was able to overcome death, which was the result of sin - and so this is a more reflective text than the hymn that the chorale prelude relates to. But I certainly see what you mean about the suspensions needing enough time.
I had an interesting experience recording another episode on the same organ, which made me talk about exactly your point in the last third of that episode - see ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-5F98itOEAkY.html . Hope that the explanation there might be of interest to you.
