Dear All,
Please find the complete set of Bach's 4th English Suite. According to what I have read, these suites are more English by their destination than their style, which is closer to the French one. Whatever the country of reference, it is beautiful, profane Bach, in the spirit of the Partitas or ... French suites. The sets starts by a quite long prelude, which makes me think about the Italian concerto, with a A-B-A structure. Then come an Allemande, a Courante, a Sarabande, a Menuet in two parts, ending by the repetition of the first one, and finally a Gigue.
I have recorded this suite on my Yamaha S400 B acoustic grand piano, as I find this instrument more suitable than the harpsichord (digital or acoustic).
To come back to the countries evoked by this music - Germany, England, Italy and France - I am presenting it as an hymn for Europe, in those difficult times for our continent... Enjoy !


Bach - BWV 809 - English Suite No. 4 - Prelude (4:52)

Bach - BWV 809 - English Suite No. 4 - Allemande (4:30)

Bach - BWV 809 - English Suite No. 4 - Courante (1:53)

Bach - BWV 809 - English Suite No. 4 - Sarabande (4:07)

Bach - BWV 809 - English Suite No. 4 - Minuet I & II (3:08)

Bach - BWV 809 - English Suite No. 4 - Gigue (3:13)

Hi Francois,

I had a listen to all of your recordings here. Wonderful playing, these sound great. It somewhat boggles my mind that you were able to learn these so quickly after playing the Scherzo last week! I checked the tags, all looks well. One thing is, for future recordings, put at least 2 seconds of silence at the beginning and end of your recordings. Chris and Monica will chime in if they have any other nits to pick.

Enjoyed listening to these,

Riley

Wow Francois, you are being very productive lately ! I would assume that you have had this suite in your repertoire for a long time. A marvellous performance on which I can find little to criticise. There's the odd less-than-optimal ornament or trill, and the odd little slip or missing note in
the vigorous outer movements, and I'd wish to hear the LH better in some passages in the Prelude but that is all pretty unimportant. Great
playing, very imaginative embellishments in the repeats of the Sarabande ! Are you using una corda for all the repeats ? The Menuets sound
rather like French baroque, I wonder how that can be ? There are some fumbles in the Menuet II. Again, not very important.

I am still slaving over the 2nd English Suite (have been for years, it feels like) and I can only hope it will be half as good as this.

I do agree with Riley about the abrupt begin and end of the mp3's. Indeed there should be some seconds of silence before and after. Just imagine they are played in sequence and there's no silence in between !

Hello Riley,
Thanks for your kind message ! Hence, I recorded the Bach suite during the same week-end as the Chopin (plus another piece that I will release in the coming weeks). But I don't want to monopolize the PS stage, nor to give to many pieces at once... Regarding the silence after each piece, it is something I usually check quite thoroughly. Here, I made them short purposely, because it is a suite, so that the pieces follow each other quite closely. Therefore, I put blank sections of about 3-4 seconds, except after the Sarabande. This one being slow and meditative, it is my feeling that the listener needs more rest before to get into the final Gigue.



Thanks Chris, I know that no flaw can escape from your sniper rifle, but I appreciate your positive assessment, from a feared keeper of Bach's temple ! I'm sure you can do a great job in the 2nd suite, with about no fluff... Yes I use the una corda in some repeats, while I would prefer to have enough technique to play pp with the same degree of control as when I play mf (but I need 50 more years of practice to reach this point... , and also a piano with lighter mechanism). Finally you seem to be surprised by some similarity between Bach and Couperin. But listen e.g. the Allemande of "l'Art de toucher le clavecin": it sounds very much like a small Bach's invention. I have read somewhere that the two composers had a correspondence together, but the letters were unfortunately lost...

If you are monopolizing PS with Bach recordings, so be it. If it were Cage prepared-piano pieces, there might be an uproar...

I have replaced all of your attachments of the suite with links. They should all play ok.

Thank you Riley. Are you now among the administrators of the site ? I should be aware, but apparently I've missed something...

Good job, Riley. I brought the links to the main site and just finished updating the French Suites page with Francois' recordings.

Riley is now helping us on the forum by processing new recordings and then putting the links on the thread. After that, Chris and I will update the main site with the new links.

Thanks Monica. I guess you mean 'English suites" ?

I did actually post a message about this in the Announcements Forum some days ago
Many people only look in Audition Room though, I believe.

Yes, that is what I meant.

@ Francois



Yes, I asked Chris and Monica some time ago about job openings. I asked not thinking it likely they would say "yes," that there was a position open. Good thing I asked! As Monica says, I will be working on processing new recordings in the audition room. I must say I'm looking forward to this job. There's regular recordings by site members like yourself and occasionally, as we saw at the top of this week a jazz rendition of Chopin's revolutionary etude by someone I haven't heard of before! You never know what's going to be next..

@ Chris

I just saw that announcement, I look forward to doing some hard work and being dedicated--my resume will benefit from it, no doubt

I shall take that as a compliment, even though it makes me sound like an insufferable philistine

Oh yeah, sky's the limit for you now
Seriously, it's good to have you on board, hopefully to stay. Over time we'll get you to work on the main site too (once I have more time, right now I don't have much).

Fantastic, both from a musical and technical perspective! Advertised on Twitter.

Thanks Robert for your appreciation and your tweet !