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In Reply to: RE: John - Thanks so much for your thoughtful post! posted by Chris from Lafayette on June 22, 2013 at 09:59:28
I had heard such things about enforced Baroque Dance lessons, but, really now. I think that it is one thing for a teacher to say, "OK, I require that every one of you audit one class meeting of Baroque Dance, and get a signed slip from the instructor proving you were there." To require what seems to me to be basically a waste of time I can only chalk up to a teacher who wants to get out of really teaching, or, is "logrolling" course attendance with a colleague.
Do jazz performance educators require their students to take a full course in 20th-c. Ballroom Dancing? Don't tell me if the answer is "Yes."
Anyway.
The absolute best Chaconne I have heard in years is Helene Grimaud's live performance of the Busoni transcription. For my perverse or at least nearly unique prejudices, she makes NEARLY enough of the fact that the first two chords are off the beat, and then comes the bar line, and the downbeat comes on the third chord.
How many times have you heard a violin Chaconne start with a thunderous chord that implies that that is where the beat is? (Or some times even, that implies that the piece is in 2/4 ?) Then you have to slip things around a bit to make the beat fall in the right place when the variations get going.
IIRC, one of the things that Yehudi Menuhin mentioned in one of his books was that when he was older he regretted not staying to hear the Capet Quartet play when he was young (10 years old?); he did not want to stay after they started, because the Capet Quartet played the Beethoven Quartets (according to Mehuhin) non-vibrato (I assume non-vibrato for the most part, and that they used vibrato sparingly for emphasis.)
What I do know from another source (it could be Bachmann's Encyclopedia of the Violin) is that Capet played the D-minor Chaconne with opening chords played UP-BOW. Which I think is an inspired choice, that lets the piece develop organically, instead of there being a subliminal letdown after the big declamatory start. Whether Capet played the final chords down-bow, that source did not state.
BTW, one of the many vanities Heifetz committed (such as adding notes to the end of the Franck Sonata in order to keep the pianist in his shadow) was to play the final trill of the Chaconne as a double trill.
Well, what a nice thread on a slow summer Saturday.
JM
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