{"id":1486,"date":"2012-02-12T07:45:20","date_gmt":"2012-02-12T12:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=1486"},"modified":"2012-02-12T07:45:20","modified_gmt":"2012-02-12T12:45:20","slug":"j-s-bach-one-composer-whose-greatness-no-one-has-to-argue-but-not-many-people-perform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2012\/02\/12\/j-s-bach-one-composer-whose-greatness-no-one-has-to-argue-but-not-many-people-perform\/","title":{"rendered":"J.S. Bach: One composer whose greatness no one has to argue, but not many people perform"},"content":{"rendered":"

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There’s a nice hour-long documentary on J.S. Bach from the BBC, below. It waxes almost fulsome on his merits. But it’s a strange paradox how, out of all the Classical Greats, Bach is, it’s safe to say, the least performed to a mass audience.<\/p>\n

You’ll find Mozart and Beethoven anywhere and everywhere. But Bach? Less so.<\/p>\n

Does he intimidate performers as well as listeners?<\/p>\n

Is he like Shakespeare, whose plays and sonnets address timeless issues in language from a time past?<\/p>\n

Perhaps, as with Shakespeare, the performer needs to work extra hard to make those words compelling to each new generation.<\/p>\n

Before we get to the Bach documentary, I want to show a case-in-point of a performer who bends his notes into irresistible narratives: Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt performing Bach’s French Suite No. 5, in G Major at Toronto’s Koerner Hall, courtesy of the CBC:<\/p>\n