Latry at RAH Prom

[Denis O'Connor]

Good old BBC! They still refer to the instrument as a Father Willis. The announcer referred to T & F in D minor as the only genuine organ piece in his programme of transcriptions.Did it not start life as a violin piece ?

I do not generally like transcriptions as a genre, but M. Latry certainly put the organ through its paces.

The tuner is to be congratulated as everything seemed in first-class order.

 

 

[Vox Humana]

26 minutes ago, Denis O'Connor said:

The announcer referred to T & F in D minor as the only genuine organ piece in his programme of transcriptions.Did it not start life as a violin piece ?

Not necessarily. There was something of the enfant terrible about the late Prof Peter Williams. He was fond of challenging people to distinguish between what was fact and what they merely assumed was fact. He wrote an article pointing out that one can't trust a word in the phrase "Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor for organ" and then went on to explain how there was no proof that (a) the piece is by Bach, (b) the original title was 'Toccata and Fugue', (c) the original key was D minor, or (d) it was originally written for the organ. Regarding the last point, he merely pointed out that a lot of the figuration and other writing was more idiomatic of a stringed instrument. He suggested the violin, but others since have suggested the violoncello piccolo and even, I think, the lute. Nobody seems to doubt that the title must be later than Bach - such bipartite titles didn't appear until after he was dead - but there's no proof that his points are either right or wrong. His aim wasn't to prove or disprove anything, but just to point out that nothing about the piece was certain.

[SlowOrg]

You can listen to Latry's RAH concert here. The music starts at 3:39.