About Bach

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 409, 24 April 1947, Page 10

About Bach

N an hour of Bach’s music on Good Friday, 4YA included five choral preludes from the "Little Organ Book." These were played by Albert Schweitzer, that remarkable and versatile genius whose two monumental tomes on Bach’s life and works represent only a small part of his activities. In his book,

Schweitzer develops in careful detail his own method of playing Bach, his main Suggestion being that a retreat from modernisation is long overdue, and that performers should endeavour to .make Bach's works sound as Bach himself would have wished. Among some startling experiments in this diréction, Schweitzer recommends the use of the clavier instead of the modern grand piano, the substitution of the old curved in the great chaconne for solo violin, and the resurrection of many ancient instruments, including the flute & bec, the viol da gamba, and something called a Quartgeige. The main purpose of introducing Bach-lovers to this antique research is not so much to supersede modern instruments by older ones, as to make the performer really understand the inner nature of Bach’s works by hearing them as originally intended; such knowledge can then be applied to the interpretation of Bach on modern instruments with considerable gain. Now is the time for someone to protest about the prevalence, in our radio Bach progtammes, of transcriptions and arrangements. The time has come, surely, when we can take our Bach "straight." It should not be possible to find in the programmes a work by "Luther-Bach-Sto-kowski’-a musical sandwich in which the bread is cut far too thickly!