Up The Wrong Tree

I played Bach (and Beethoven - a thrilling lesson) to Thomas Brandis (professor from Luebeck, former concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra) today, and as if to hammer home the point that Bach defies everything and everyone and causes endless controversy, he logically and calmly went through the G minor Adagio, gently rubbishing every last one of Menuhin's re-phrasings and bowings. In terms of fingering, he presented a different argument too: "Bach used four strings". Therefore, he is saying, it is natural to play many first- and low-position fingerings. I guess the other side of that argument would be that a modern instrument has a far brighter tone than the gut-stringed examples of Bach's time, and consequently the resonances and tone qualities are now more of an issue when taking voicing of horizontal lines (melody line, bass line) into consideration. Hmm.

This is the kind of idea that will benefit from discussion in a forum once this site becomes highly trafficked. I read a wonderful quote today, along the lines of "the collective wisdom of an internet forum is far greater than the wisdom of its most intelligent single member".