THE FRENCH SUITES
PETER HILL
Peter Hill piano J S BACH (1685–1750): THE French Suites
W A Mozart (1756–1791): Suite in C, K 399 & Gigue in G, K 574
DISC ONE
Suite No. 1 in D minor, BWV 812
1 Allemande [3:39]
2 Courante [2:09]
3 Sarabande [3:33]
4 Menuet I & II [3:12]
5 Gigue [4:10]
Suite No. 2 in C minor, BWV 813
6 Allemande [3:03]
7 Courante [2:01]
8 Sarabande [3:09]
9 Air [1:40]
10 Menuet I & II [3:00] 11 Gigue [3:00]
Recorded on 5-8 July 2015 at the University Concert Hall, Cardiff
Session producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter
Producer: Peter Hill
24-bit digital editing: Paul Baxter
24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter
Design: Drew Padrutt
Booklet editor: Henry Howard
Allemande [3:39]
Sarabande [3:03]
Anglaise [2:12]
Menuet & Trio [3:21]
Gigue [2:13]
No. 4 in E flat major, BWV 815
DISC TWO
Suite No. 5 in G major, BWV 816
Gigue [2:25]
playing time (CD1) [64:14]
Piano: Steinway Model D Serial No. 572883 (2004)
Piano technician: Kait Farbon Cover photograph © MC Photography Session photography © Delphian Records Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.co.uk
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Allemande [3:22]
Courante [1:45]
Sarabande [5:11]
Gavotte [1:13] 5 Bourrée [1:21]
Gigue [2:34] Suite No. 3 in B minor, BWV 814
Suite in C, K 399
Ouverture [4:30]
Allemande [4:06]
Courante [2:51]
Sarabande [1:58]
by Peter Hill 20 Gigue in G, K 574 [1:41]
playing time (CD2) [50:02]
This recording is dedicated to the memory of my sister Rosamond. PH
Special thanks to Caroline Rae, Julian Rushton and Yo Tomita.
The French Suites have a special place in Bach’s keyboard works. Besides containing music as profound and poetic as any Bach wrote, the textures of the French Suites have a transparency and sparkle that reflects a move towards the galant style fashionable among Bach’s contemporaries. Bach started work on the French Suites probably towards the end of his time as Capellmeister at Cöthen (1717–23). During these years he began organising his keyboard works into collections: the Clavier-Büchlein for his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, then aged ten; the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier (1722); and the Inventions and Sinfonias (1723). The process continued in the 1720s and 1730s with the revision and completion of the English and French Suites and the Partitas.
Part of the reason for these works was undoubtedly educational, to provide Bach’s students with a repertoire that covered every aspect of keyboard performance. As a teacher Bach stressed the practicalities of music making and avoided too much theory, being (in the words of his son Carl Philipp Emanuel) ‘no lover of dry, mathematical stuff’; he was, for example, among the first to recommend playing with the thumb as a means of allowing the hand to traverse the keyboard. An account of Bach’s own playing was given by Johann Nikolaus Forkel in his pioneering biography (1802), his description based on the testimony of Bach’s sons:
From the easy, unconstrained motion of the fingers, from the beautiful touch, from the clearness and precision in connecting the successive tones, from the advantages of the new mode of fingering, from the equal development and practice of all the fingers of both hands, and, lastly, from the great variety of his figures of melody, Sebastian Bach at length acquired such a high degree of facility and, we may almost say, unlimited power over his instrument in all the keys that difficulties almost ceased to exist for him.
Bach’s approach to teaching was recalled by Heinrich Nikolaus Gerber, who became a pupil not long after Bach’s move to Leipzig in 1723. Gerber made copies of the music he was to learn, which was arranged systematically in order of difficulty, beginning with the study of two and three-voice counterpoint in the Inventions and Sinfonias, continuing with the English Suites and French Suites, together with movements from the Partitas, and concluding with the first book of The WellTempered Clavier.
Those who imagine Bach’s life as one of sober diligence will be surprised to learn that in 1721 he spent more than a fifth of his annual salary on a huge consignment of fine Rhine wines. The cause for celebration was Bach’s marriage, on 3 December 1721, to Anna Magdalena Wilcke (Bach’s first wife, Maria Barbara, had died the previous year). Anna Magdalena was a singer, and may well have been a competent player of the harpsichord and clavichord. Certainly, this would explain
why soon after their marriage she created an album, inscribing the title page herself, in which Bach entered compositions, perhaps for her to learn, or for him to play to her. These include the earliest versions of music from the first five French Suites, which together with the Sixth Suite in E major were completed by 1725. How the French Suites acquired their title is unclear. Possibly they were so called in order to distinguish them from the English Suites, which according to Forkel were written for an English patron. But there is no evidence that the title came from Bach, and the earliest reference to ‘French Suites’ appeared in 1762, twelve years after Bach’s death.
The Suites consist of stylised dances, whose movements, following long-established tradition, begin with an Allemande, Courante and Sarabande, followed by a number of lighter dances before the closing Gigue. Contemporary accounts describe the characteristics expected of each dance. The Allemande, for example, ‘must be composed and likewise danced in a grave and ceremonious manner’ (Johann Gottfried Walther, 1732); the Courante is either of the French type, in a moderate tempo (as in the D minor and B minor Suites), or derived from the quicker Italian corrente. The heart of each Suite is the Sarabande, of Spanish origin, and in a slow triple metre with the emphasis on the second beat. The movements are all in binary form, with a cadence at the midpoint, and with each half repeated, giving the player the chance
to embellish the music or to colour it differently. The second halves are usually longer, opening with a fresh development of the ideas, and taking the music into remoter keys.
Within each movement ideas are in a perpetual state of evolution, so that the architecture is fluid, with no two movements alike. Remarkably, this is equally true of the slighter and apparently simpler dances. A case in point is the shortest movement in the French Suites, the Menuet from the Suite No. 4 in E flat major. This opens with a melody that makes use of pairs of notes, descending as ‘sighs’; but already by the second bar the intervals in these pairs start to widen, forming in effect two voices, with one pushing upwards, the other falling. The melody next moves to the left hand (bars 3–4), before developing in a sequence (bars 5–6), which turns the corner into the key of the dominant (B flat), the approach to the cadence using the paired notes in wider intervals. In the second half this figure transfers to the left hand, developed into a kind of yodelling accompaniment, while the right hand creates a response to the original melody out of similar material – the pairs, and the leap of a sixth – growing through a sequence that touches on a minor key. The lines in both hands then reach a plateau, the expressive climax, after which the movement concludes almost nonchalantly, coming back to earth after a tiny flight of fancy.
Even from this brief outline one can see how much Bach makes from the simplest ideas, and how at the same time the ‘psychology’ of the music is constantly changing, going through various transformations, from the playful opening to the fleeting moment of heightened intensity just before the end. The marvel is that all Bach’s inventiveness is deployed with such a light touch, so that however sophisticated the music may be, it remains true to the simplicity of the dance. Bach cannot have known the French painters of the early eighteenth century, yet the French Suites always remind me of Watteau, with his idyllic landscapes peopled by revellers, but always shaded with melancholy.
Suite No. 1 in D minor, BWV 812
The first of the French Suites is the most expressively serious of the set. The Allemande has similarities with the corresponding movement from the D minor Partita for solo violin, and the melody line splits into a dialogue between two voices, a feature of Bach’s writing for violin or cello. The left hand adds its own slow-moving layer, a gradual descent down the octave (D to D), a move repeated (bars 5–9), followed by a descent from D to A for the cadence that closes the first half. Descending scales become part of the melody, at first shared between the hands (just before the midpoint), later in contrary motion, in the penultimate bar of the movement. After the fluidity of the Allemande the Courante has a
stubborn insistence; it is in the 3/2 metre of the French type, with the counterpoint based on the undulating figure that flows out of the initial dotted rhythm. Typical of Bach’s binary movements is the sense that the second half shows ideas in a fresh light; in this case the effect is almost a mirror image, with the opening motif inverted after the double bar.
The Sarabande has the texture of a fourvoice chorale. Here again the second half starts with a striking new departure; in this case the melody transfers to the bass, heard against an entirely new harmonisation. The first of the two Menuets opens with a lightly contrapuntal texture, with three voices in play, again developed during the second half where the melody appears in both the lower voices. The second Menuet is sturdier, the rhythm stressing the second beat, invariably decorated with a trill, against a nimble running bass line.
The closing Gigue is unusual, a fully-fledged fugue in three voices, with the subject inverted in the second half, using the dotted rhythms associated with the French overture.
Suite No. 2 in C minor, BWV 813
The C minor Suite is lighter and more lyrical; surprisingly, for music that seems so lucid, the C minor Suite caused Bach endless trouble, and a large number of early and later readings survive. The Allemande is a graceful arioso, containing pairs of quicker notes which spin out into brief melismas. The Courante is in
the Italian style, light on its feet but shaped by expressive detail. In the second half the interplay between the hands leads to a complex sequence with the left hand in paired crotchets (as if in duple time) against quavers grouped in threes. The Sarabande has a singing melody with two accompanying voices played by the left hand. The opening phrase is an example of the finesse with which Bach shapes the melody through the movement of the harmony. In the second bar the first note, tied over the barline, is dissonant with the descending bass line, the dissonance resolved by way of a tiny arabesque. The next bar is similar, but this time the arabesque extends into a sequence, coming to rest on the dominant harmony, unexpectedly on the second beat of bar 4, suggesting that bars 3 and 4 could be heard as being in duple metre. This kind of ambiguity is at the heart of Bach’s music, and is one of the fascinations of studying and performing Bach’s music: the music seems so full of possibilities that with every performance there is something new to discover. The Air – so called because it is not itself a dance movement – is a contrapuntal game between the hands, initially light in character, but becoming more sonorous towards the end, as the left hand restores the theme to its original form, after the inverted version that began the second half. There are two Menuets. The first is deceptively simple, with the rising sixths in the melody suggesting the potential for deeper intensity, realised in the closing phrase, which is introduced by
a trill in the right hand. The second is more sonorous, particularly at the start of the second half where the countermelody in the left hand (the inversion of the bass line at the beginning of the movement) is an octave lower than one might expect. The Gigue has a lightly skipping rhythm in 3/8 time, with very close imitation between the hands, and profuse ornamentation in the repeats.
Suite No. 3 in B minor, BWV 814
The B minor Allemande is as delicate as the C minor, but in a different way, the lyricism propelled by constant reference to the opening four-note motif. The Courante opens emphatically, developing into something more playful after the midpoint, with a rhythmic ambiguity that occasionally divides the 6/4 bar into three main beats instead of two. The Sarabande, like the C minor, is an arioso melody, but this time shared with the left hand, which has the melody (in the major) at the start of the second half, and again as a recapitulation in the closing bars. The Anglaise is a dance in duple metre. The drone bass at the beginning gives the music the feel of a musette, a dance that takes its name from a type of bagpipe. As always, the ideas deepen as they develop, especially when the tune returns near the end in a new harmonisation. The Menuet and Trio are very contrasted. The former has an arpeggiated melody in running quavers, which suggests a violin or flute. The Trio, unexpectedly
Notes on the music for a minuet, is one of the most profound movements in the French Suites. The texture is in three voices, the second half opening with the melody in the bass, and a wonderful shift of key and colour (F sharp minor – E minor – D major). The Gigue, though not a fugue, sounds like one, with the theme reiterated in different keys, with intervening episodes. The form is powerful and compact, with close parallels between the two halves.
Suite No. 4 in E flat major, BWV 815
As the Suites move from minor to major keys, the Allemande eases gently into the light, a sunrise which is like a prelude in arpeggio style, the bell-like sounds in the treble at the start of the second half being especially entrancing. The Courante has a triplet rhythm, skipping lightly, though becoming more poignant in the second half as the melody touches on minor keys. The Sarabande has the characteristic short-long rhythm of the dance, floating above descending (and later ascending) scales, the ideas then exchanged between the hands. Bach’s revisions indicate where melody notes may be held on to give more sonority to the harmony at the cadences. In the trio of lighter movements that follow, a rustic-sounding Gavotte, together with the Menuet (described earlier), frame the Air, a movement which is both lively and smoothly lyrical, and which anticipates the sonata form of the later eighteenth century by ending with a clear recapitulation of the theme, exactly as
it was at the beginning. The closing Gigue is a deliciously light-hearted fugue, which turns its subject – a horn call – upside down in the second half, righting itself in the nick of time just before the end.
Suite No. 5 in G major, BWV 816
This Allemande opens almost shyly, unfolding into a beautifully poised melody which integrates the accompanying semiquavers into the flow of ideas. The twist into the minor just before the end of each half is lovely in itself, but also gives a glow to the subsequent cadence in the major. The Courante is a brilliant twopart invention, the opening scale inverted at the start of the second half (and elsewhere), the opposing directions used in combination just before the end. The Sarabande opens serenely, becoming more complex in expression as it proceeds. The ending, with the melody flowing into quicker notes, recalls the B minor and E flat Sarabandes, and looks forward to the Aria from the Goldberg Variations, as does the Sarabande as a whole. The triplets Bach used in his revision of the closing bars indicate that the tempo should be very spacious. Instead of a minuet there is a trio of characterful movements. The Gavotte is like a pas de deux, almost flirtatious at the start, with a more laconic character introduced at the second half, and the two combining in a duet that uses scales in contrary motion, recalling the Courante. The nimbleness of the left hand
part is also a feature of the Bourrée, which has a forthright brilliance offset at one point early in the second half by a phrase of rapidly shifting chromaticism. The Loure is a sort of slow-motion gigue, pensive and somewhat enigmatic. The Gigue itself is perhaps the most virtuoso movement in the French Suites, a moto perpetuo that is also a fugue in three voices. Once again Bach underlines the symmetry between the two halves of the binary form by inverting the fugue subject in the second half.
Suite No. 6 in E major, BWV 817
The Allemande would translate well to the violin, with the walking bass line as the accompanying continuo. This is one of the subtlest of the opening movements, balanced between liveliness and lyricism. The developments in the second half contain a patch of remote harmony, with C sharp minor approached from its ‘Neapolitan’ (D major) chord. The Courante is exceptionally swift and scintillating, the piano giving the opportunity to use a very light and almost staccato touch. The Sarabande has little of the serenity of the earlier Sarabandes, instead giving the characteristic rhythm an impassioned treatment that seems to come closest to the dance’s Spanish origins. The tune of the Gavotte moves in thirds and sixths over what one could imagine as pizzicato bass notes. The Polonaise has equal finesse and elegance,
becoming especially poetic in the second half in the sequence of modulations that leads back to the home key. The Bourrée has irresistible panache, another brilliant two-part invention. The Petit Menuet is pared to a minimum, so languid that at one point the left hand gets left behind on the ‘wrong’ harmony. Appropriately, this most graceful of the Suites closes with a Gigue that is a perfect synthesis between inventive counterpoint and the exuberance of the dance.
Mozart: Suite in C, K399 and Gigue in G, K574
The Suite in C was composed in 1782, at a time when Mozart frequented the house of Baron Gottfried van Swieten, an influential figure in the musical world of late eighteenth-century Vienna. Son of the personal physician to the Empress Maria Theresa, van Swieten had a career as a diplomat before returning to Vienna where he was appointed Prefect of the Imperial Library. While ambassador in Berlin (1770–77) he became a connoisseur of Bach and Handel, and championed their music, along with that of C.P.E. Bach. He was the librettist of Haydn’s The Creation (1798) and The Seasons (1801), and the dedicatee of Forkel’s life of Bach.
The Suite epitomises Mozart’s fascination with baroque music, but also shows his love of exploration and experiment, so that although
Bach and Handel may have been his models, the music of the Suite could not possibly be mistaken for theirs. Unlike baroque suites, in which all the movements are in the same key (though allowing for switching from major to minor), Mozart planned the Suite with successive movements in different keys. The movements are closest to the baroque style at the opening, becoming increasingly rococo as they proceed.
The Suite begins in the declamatory style of a French overture, with a softer answering idea that recalls C.P.E. Bach in its chromaticism. A transition leads to the second section (Allegro), a vigorous fugue in three voices, making use of inversions of the subject. The fugue ends with overlapping entries of the subject (like a stretto) in C minor, preparing the way for the Allemande, also in C minor, a graceful movement in which the later stages of each half parallel one another, very much in the manner of Bach. The Courante, in the tempo of a minuet and in the related key of E flat major, pays homage to Bach in the elegant interweaving of its melodic strands.
At this point the Suite would have continued with a Sarabande (in G minor), but Mozart broke off after sketching only the first six bars. My completion of the movement is not a pastiche of Mozart (though I stay within the framework
of Mozart’s language) but a short meditation on the ideas in the fragment, especially the chromaticism in Mozart’s answering phrase.
For the final movement of the Suite, since Mozart did not compose one, I’ve borrowed the Gigue in G, K574, composed during Mozart’s visit to Leipzig in 1789. While in Leipzig Mozart improvised on the organ in the Thomaskirche and met the Cantor, Johann Friedrich Doles, a former pupil of Bach. The visit may well have stimulated Mozart’s renewed interest in Bach’s music, evident in his late works (the fugal overture and the chorale for the Men in Armour from Die Zauberflöte are famous examples).
The Gigue begins as a fugue, very much in the style of Bach’s gigues, and may well have been intended as a tribute to Bach, especially given the resemblance between Mozart’s subject (or theme) and the B minor Fugue from Book
One of The Well-Tempered Clavier. Where Bach’s subject uses all twelve notes of the chromatic scale, Mozart’s uses ten, though all twelve are in play in a dazzling passage of counterpoint near the start of the second half.
The Gigue was inscribed in the visitors’ book of Mozart’s host, dated 16 May 1789, so that this astonishing tour de force seems to have been a spur-of-the-moment inspiration.
© 2015 Peter Hill
One of the leading British pianists of his generation, Peter Hill is known for his performances and recordings of twentiethcentury and contemporary music as well as of the classical repertoire. A lifelong fascination with the music of Bach led to Hill’s first two releases for Delphian, The Well-Tempered Clavier (DCD34101 & DCD34126), which attracted outstanding praise, with Book Two featured as ‘CD of the Week’ on BBC Radio 3.
A third Delphian recording – ‘La Fauvette Passerinette, a Messiaen premiere, with birds, landscapes & homages’ (DCD34141) – placed a previously unknown work by Messiaen, which Hill rediscovered in 2012, in the context of music by Messiaen and his contemporaries. The CD has received extraordinary acclaim, including the award of the coveted ‘Diapason d’Or’ by the French magazine Diapason and nomination in the Instrumental category of the 2015 Gramophone Awards.
Among earlier recordings are complete cycles of Messiaen and of Berg, Schoenberg and Webern. The Messiaen is regarded as a classic account, ‘one of the most impressive solo recording projects of recent years’ (New York Times), and won Messiaen’s own
endorsement: ‘Beautiful technique, a true poet: I am a passionate admirer of Peter Hill’s playing.’ Both sets feature in 1001 Classical Recordings You Must Hear Before You Die Other CDs include Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen (with Benjamin Frith), and two CDs of Stravinsky including the composer’s arrangements of The Rite of Spring and Three Movements from ‘Petrushka’
Peter Hill’s writings include Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring (Cambridge Music Handbooks) and three books on Messiaen, among them a groundbreaking biography (Messiaen, Yale University Press) which was awarded the Dumesnil Prize by the Académie des BeauxArts in Paris. As well as recitals Peter Hill gives lectures, masterclasses and broadcasts around the world, and has lectured at leading universities, among them Oxford, Cambridge, Chicago, Columbia and Yale, as well as the Juilliard School and the Australian National Academy of Music, and at venues such as the Library of Congress, Carnegie Hall and the Royal Festival Hall. He holds an honorary professorship at Sheffield University and is a Fellow of the Royal Northern College of Music.
Also available on Delphian
J.S. Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book One
Peter Hill piano
DCD34126 (2 discs)
A recognised authority in twentieth-century and contemporary music, Peter Hill turns for the first time on disc to another of his lifelong preoccupations: the music of J.S. Bach. In two new 2CD sets marking his new recording relationship with Delphian, Hill brings his customary scholarly acumen and crystalline musical intelligence to bear on the two books of preludes and fugues that comprise Bach’s immortal ‘48’ – music of ‘unsurpassed inventiveness’.
‘Bach’s music tests the pianist in many ways, but one of the most telling is that it asks how much or how little the performer should exert ego. Hill gets the balance just about right in an intimate account … that nevertheless oozes authority’
– Sunday Times, June 2013
J.S. Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book Two
Peter Hill piano
DCD34101 (2 discs)
‘warmth, clarity and insight’
– Classical Music Magazine, March 2013, EDITOR’S CHOICE
‘exceptional readings, scholarly yet living … For all the compositional rigour, Hill makes these Preludes and Fugues sing and dance, and also brings out their unshakeable foundations of faith’
– HiFi Critic, March 2012
‘Note his use of varied pianistic colours – here muted, there radiant, sonorous then shimmering. And [he] unfolds contrapuntal lines with clarity, displaying an eloquent understanding of the music’s underlying structure’
– BBC Music Magazine, May 2012, FIVE STARS
Peter Hill
La Fauvette Passerinette: a Messiaen premiere, with birds, landscapes & homages
Peter Hill DCD34141
In 2012, leading pianist and Messiaen scholar Peter Hill made a remarkable discovery among the composer’s papers: several pages of tightly written manuscript from 1961, constituting a near-complete and hitherto unknown work for piano. Hill was able to fill in some missing dynamics and articulations by consulting Messiaen’s birdsong notebooks, and here sets this glittering addition to Messiaen’s piano output in the context both of the composer’s own earlier work and of music by the many younger composers on whom Messiaen was a profound influence – from Stockhausen and Takemitsu to George Benjamin, who like Hill himself worked closely with the composer in the years before his death.
‘A new Messiaen work may be the focus here, but this would be an outstanding recital even without that enticement … Hill’s poetry and sense of colour are stronger than ever’
– BBC Music Magazine, October 2014, INSTRUMENTAL CHOICE
‘rewardingly substantial … [an] outstanding recital disc. The appeal is greatly enhanced by the exceptional quality of the recording’ – Gramophone, December 2014, EDITOR’S CHOICE
Also shortlisted at the 2015 Gramophone Awards
J.S. Bach: Suites for Solo Cello
Philip Higham DCD34150 (2 discs)
Philip Higham’s debut recording, a disc of Benjamin Britten’s three solo suites, won acclaim across the board, including Disc of the Month accolades from both Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine. He has chosen to follow it directly with the Bach suites which were Britten’s inspiration, and which remain pinnacles of the repertoire for any cellist. Not afraid to question received wisdom, Higham’s thoughtful yet daring approach leads him to combine elements of period and modern style both in his playing and in his choice of instruments – a 1697 cello for the first five suites and a 2013 five-string instrument to bring out the extraordinary range of colours with which Bach invested the crowning Sixth.
‘The character he finds throughout this music is consistently revealing … unpretentious depths and organic, naturalistic flow: the highest possible recommendation’ – The Herald, August 2015
Wilde plays Chopin Vol III
David Wilde
DCD34159
The reviews that greeted Vol II of David Wilde’s Chopin last year spoke of his playing as ‘vast, monumental, inexorable … a wealth of colour and detail, all in service of an overarching design of crystal clarity’ (International Record Review). Wilde, wrote Bryce Morrison in Gramophone, ‘scorns all easy facility,’ presenting Chopin not as the familiar salon dandy but as ‘an epic, gnarled and rugged genius shaking his fist at the universe with all the defiance of King Lear’.
Here is a further instalment of this extraordinary Chopin journey. As he sat down to record the B flat minor Scherzo, Wilde said to Delphian producer Paul Baxter:
‘I’ve been playing this piece for 73 years – I don’t think I need a score!’ This is Chopin absorbed and reshaped: the radical expressive outcome of a lifetime’s involvement with this inexhaustible composer.
‘If you like Chopin given with a steep and original slant rather than the sort that garners prizes on the competition circuit and in the exam room, then this is for you … Excellently recorded’ – Gramophone, August 2015