Vintage Bach Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, Prelude 1 in C

[sirhonestharry]

FINALLY!!!! Someone who actually knows the dynamics!!!

[hottenma]

This is an incredible version! I wan to buy a CD of him doing all the preludes and fugues but I can't find anything on him.

Can anyone please help me find more of his recordings? thank you!

[caravastandurbin]

Pese a la mala calidad del sonido,se aprecia claramente la excelente técnica.

[TheLivingHeiromartyr]

arrghh, he's playing it too fast!!!!

[Dantheman5681]

@Dickmuncha101 This is in C major. Actually saying something is in C implies it is major. C is major; C- is minor; C+ is augmented; and C° is diminished. Learn some theory and you'll go far.

[Aberlambchop]

@Dickmuncha101 Calm yo tits!

[fadysaid445]

i did it the first time i played it but not that good ofcourse

[EheheLOL]

That's brilliant. XD But I think it will sound better if it's a little faster?

[IllyaMuromets]

@EheheLOL FASTER?! no he is playing it quite fast already, he is doing fine any faster and it's not the same,

[itsninitime]

This song makes me incredibly sad every time i play it.

[thegoonist]

too fast. slower pace would be beautiful

[Craptron2000]

he's rushing it

[JAMxSkalla16]

Love this!! such a beautiful song, i've learned the first minute of it so far, it's so much fun to play (:

[metilhed001]

God bless my college counterpoint teacher for getting me, a jazz guitar player, into Bach. Some of the most beautiful music ive ever heard

[ASnoctivagus]

the best interpretation of this composition!

thx!

[JAMxSkalla16]

i'm going to try to learn this. i love it, looks like a blast to play, love the melody lots of soul and emotion. sweeeeet

[willemdebaas]

This song is really easy to play and still beautifull! Im playing this song since I was 8 years old, and believe me Im deffeniately not a good piano player! Awesome song

[ughwhateverrr]

did he use the pedal?

[TeamEmbry88]

This is awesome! My teacher is getting me to learn it and now i am so inspired! Lol!

[mattak13]

this is a beautiful piece

[kasyapa]

shimmering light.

[xMichelleBaby]

It's funny, my teacher has been trying to get me into this piece for months. For some reason, I just couldn't lose myself in the piece at all, I just wasn't feeling it. So, I've been putting it off.

This video completely changed my view on the song. I'm really eager to play it now. :] I don't know what he did, but he made it sound incredible.

Good post! Thanks for sharing! :]

[camilocuesta]

I know what you mean, this piece is given to kids because it doesn't have many notes, but it is way difficult to understand how to play it convincingly.

[nbrons79]

Very beautiful!

[priyanka41]

i'm playing this right now. not hard, just a bunch of 16th notes in the right hand, but oh well. not that hard, but sounds awesome when being played by this guy.

[RavenAsturius]

supreme

[cowgoesmoo2]

lol i thought it wuz supposed to b played real real slow

[enchantedviolin3]

My piano teacher said there are two ways to play this piece.

Very fast or very slow :D

[gaussmotion]

beautiful!

[LVB1770]

BACHasaSWASTIKA, you have serious mental problems! You need to seek help right away!

You are truly a sick person!

[cowgoesmoo2]

hey you are the one

[AlexiomoO]

I learned this song on two music lessons and i had never played piano before :)

[cowgoesmoo2]

braggr

[utahandy27]

that's the point. this is the first lesson in bach's book of keyboard studies. maybe in a few years you'll get to the end.

[ScriabinFanatic]

this song is not difficult, it is very straightforward with no challenging rhythmic, harmonic, or melodic constructions

[lamarfreak18]

and your point is?

[C0urante]

That's the challenging part! It is so simple, and yet if you cannot play with a steady hand, then it fails you. The rhythmic consistency only serves to make it MORE difficult, not less.

[tubezillauk]

excellent point more margin for error, harder to become a maestro

[Boratlon]

Mmm, but the tempo is very forgiving as demonstrated here.

[koreybishop]

@C0urante

what are you talking about? i'm assuming you don't play an instrument and are just talking directly out of your ass. a steady rhythm is in every way easier than any varied rhythms by definition.

[C0urante]

@koreybishop Haa... are you trolling me? The accusations that I don't play an instrument are completely baseless. I have been playing the cello and tenor saxophone for years, and have even managed to get this piece (or at least the notes to it) down on piano. As a result, I can tell you--with plenty of experience to back me up--that keeping a steady, metronomic beat of sixteenth notes is a very challenging undertaking indeed. What instruments do you play, that make you so much smarter than me?

[koreybishop]

@C0urante

any metronomic variation in your playing will be present with any rhythm, so you now compound the complexity of an abnormal rhythm with the fact that you can't keep time. it doesn't all of the sudden get easier because it's harder... that makes no sense.

i don't have to be able to play an instrument to say any of the things i'm saying, but as it happens i play guitar, drums, and piano.

[C0urante]

@koreybishop "The complexity of an abnormal rhythm" is only present with abnormal rhythms--and I would say that hardly anything Bach wrote qualifies as truly abnormal, although there are exceptions. I am not saying, however, that steady sixteenth notes are complex--just that they are very revealing of your inner metronome and your capabilities to regularly execute similar, repeated motions with little recover time. At least with rhythmic variation, the opportunity is given to place various

[C0urante]

@C0urante durations within a greater overall context, where slight mistakes may be masked by the fact that not every note is given an equal space to occupy and liberties may be taken to preserve the overall metronomic consistency of the music. With steady sixteenth notes, any single slip is immediately audible, since each note is so easily compared to every other--it's like having a beat on each note, where any mistake immediately disrupts the entire tempo, and no room for error is given.

[logert963]

Hey that was good!

But a little to fast.=)

[wmd10]

Beautiful.

[gapifirst]

Creative, I'm making a recital program for a school project. Can you tell me any special characteristics about this music? Specific contexts, historical saying about this Prelude? What should we listen for in this music?

[killbillvoltoo]

ok

Before I played piano I sang as a soloist for the Phoenix Boys Choir and soloed singing Gounds Ave Maria based off this piece, so I know all the chords pretty well, i think.

when you listen to this piece, focus on the chords and how they are resolved, how the slightest chromatic adjustment adds, releases tension, and how the overall theme migrates from 1 to V to 1V and so on.

[killbillvoltoo]

(cont)

You don't really have to focus on rhythm, other than a natural rhythm, but its just flowing, and its more a chordal study and how to pull a melody through chord transgressions.

[1992peter]

I LOVE this piece.

Good work!!!!

Keep up the good work!!

You've already just played the piano so much that you've practically landed this vid into my FAVORITE'S LIST!

[ecspade]

this is good, but i really prefer glenn gould's rendition.

[Currywurst365]

an absolutely amazing piece well played, even though it ain't too hard to play it

[indigoblue555]

Another rendition,another feeling,another way to the great JSB music=

Grateful to anyone suggesting Bach recordings by D.E.Smith = hard to find I guess =

[ratws]

Artistisch, aber viel zu romantisch! Der Mann spielt Lizt, anstatt Bach.

[tasia50]

Thanks for sharing this.

[MusicaAntiqua71]

Those who think of this playing too fast should hear Samuil Feinberg, one of the great Bach players of the past generation. And.... completely agree with ADAMWORTH1979. To me, David Edward Smith is a REAL find!! I came to know him on here and fascinated. :-)

[talkshanghai]

this is a piece anyway with good feeling! i like it.

[dragonlion52688]

His left hand is lifted too high. Not kool!!

[talkshanghai]

yeah, i wonder too, the left part should be lasting, no?

[KeyboardMania88]

He is using the sustain pedal. You can even see his legs moving. Anyone should be able to see that.

[pencuchess]

this work is coded as BWV 846. To whom it may concern. a 5-star from Germany.

[ZawiahSaki]

Lovely. I like it at this tempo. I usually play it fast too. I think the slow tempo comes from people's familiarity with the Gounaude Ave Maria.

Zoe

[PianoMickey]

Very nice! Thanks for sharing it. The close-up on his hands show textbook classic Baroque finger movement: fingers rising above the hand and snapping down, with a slight separation of notes. That's a vanishing skill. An outstanding artist.

[karen321]

he must of been desperate for he toilet

[karen321]

toooooooooooo damn fast slow it down mate whats the rush

[adamworth1979]

Too fast or too slow, it is a matter of opinion for Bach did not write tempo markings on any of these pieces. It is all a matter of interpretation. If you like it slower, thats fine, but the fact that he is playing fast does not take anything away from the piece of the pianists skill.

[Keytaster]

that's right adamworth1979. - it is interesting that almost every piece by bach written in semiquaver notes is played nearly as fast as possible, but THIS piece is played waaaay to slow (for me *g*). It's some kind of contradiction, f.e. the c sharp major prelude is as beautiful as this prelude but this is often played too fast. Strange *g*

[LVB1770]

adamworth1979,

Well said!

[Vinc2Vinc]

Just beautiful...

[lourak]

His playing is remarkably unaffected.

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Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, Prelude 1 in C