THE
TOUR
The classical repertoire for solo piano is vast and within it there are a large number of true masterpieces, works recognized not just by musicians but also by those who listen for enjoyment. As a concert pianist it is both my job and my joy to spend hours each day in close communion with these masterpieces, contemplating them and trying to unearth all their secrets.
Music is inessential to survival and yet it can capture us completely. I hold that this is because it has an important role to play in our quest for enlightenment and self-transcendence, and it is in masterpieces that this role is most vividly expressed. Such works make us listen and it is through listening that all the secrets are revealed.
JS Bach
French Overture in B minor, BWV 831 - Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750)
Ouverture
Courante
Gavotte 1
Gavotte 2
Passepied 1
Passepied 2
Sarabande
Bourrée 1
Bourrée 2
Gigue
Echo
What's in a name? We have come to associate the word 'Overture' with a single movement piece played at the beginning of a night at the opera or ballet, something mainly to be found in music of the nineteenth century. If we know the term in a Baroque sense even then we generally think of it as a single movement, and if it is a French Overture we know it will have a grand first part leading directly into a flowing and lively second part before returning to the stately music to conclude. Well, for me at least, it came as a great and happy surprise to find that a French Overture can also be a suite of dances in the same way as a Partita or English Suite. It's hard not to feel that the magnificent work known as the French Overture in B minor would be a lot more well known and more often played had it in fact been called a Partita or French Suite.
It's not often that we come across a work with eleven movements, but the suite is not unduly long. The paired movements run together and only the first movement (the French Overture itself) is on a large scale.
I found the note below on the internet and it is excellent, thank you Grant Hiroshima and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. If you read this you will know as much as I do.
