Pogorelich plays Bach English Suite II Prelude (Performance Transcription)
4,205 views · Published 18 September 2010 · 4:08 · Indexed 28 September 2026
Channel: Simon Piano · 2010 · Music
My favourite Bach performance, lively and enthusiastic. This video has gone through a lot of ideas and development, but i ended up cutting a repetition from the original recording (2:42) and trying to transcribe Pogorelich's performance as accurately as possible, especially the dynamics. Many will disagree with Pogorelich's tempo (quarter = 125, Czerny gives quarter = 108), saying that it's insanely fast, only for showmanship, and leaves musicality behind. But i think that the tempo suits the piece very well, especially because often there is not a lot going on musically, entire bars being an arpeggio of a single chord, like bars 3 to 6(!). Also, additional melodic lines in the polyphony, like 0:20, sound more grouped, and are easier to follow. I definitely prefer this tempo over slower ones, and to me it is both exciting and musically valid. Transcribing performances seems rather vague, often it is difficult to tell how exactly a crescendo is performed, when we progress from one dynamic step to the next (e.g. mf to f), etc., so a lot of the marks i wrote here are open for discussion. Also i left out some obvious marks, especially repetitions. In the beginning i initially had f instead of mf, and i think that you simply can't tell. Often, there are many very fine fluctuations in dynamics and it's almost impossible to assign dynamic marks, even if you know that at a point A it's mezzo forte and 5 seconds later it's mezzo piano (e.g. 0:32). 1:44 is one of my favorite sections. My first mark here was 'dolcissimo', then 'con intimo sentimento' which is stolen from Hamelin. 'grazioso' probably fits it better, but i would also have liked 'teneroso' (tenderly) or 'simply awesomely' ;) 2:43 is where i cut the recording, Pogorelich goes all the way back to the beginning. Besides the tempo, this is what i wanted to highlight the most. This repetition is not marked in any of the 3 editions i have of the piece (BGE, Czerny and a russian one), and i just don't understand or like it, which is why i had the idea to cut it out. Why would you repeat here? It makes the piece unneccessarily long and confusing. Maybe some of you know? The ending (coda?) is a bit anticlimactic, but to me it shows again that Pogorelich is not just trying to display his showmanship and does what he thinks is musically justified. Overall for me this a masterpiece of performance. Though it may have been unwise to confront the viewer with that assessment at the end of the video before they may have made their own judgement. If you have any thoughts or critique, shoot! I'm eager to hear what other people think about this. Transcription as images: (now unavailable) http://www.filefront.com/17299323/prelude-transcription.zip
