This is something else that I cannot understand.
Harpsichord recitals seem to be way too rare in Britain. Looking at last week's television magazine and the promenade concerts, I notice that there have been several Bach concerts this year; solo cello and violin, yes, but the works for keyboard have only ever featured one instrument - the piano!
Why?
After the comprehensive research during the last eighty or so years into Barock performance techniques, this state of affairs borders on the ludicrous!
The piano was still in it's infancy at the time of Bach's death, in fact another quite unknown fact is that the person responsible for first introducing and developing the piano in Germany was none other than the organ-builder Gottfried Silbermann, although where he found the time to devote to it is unknown. All I can say is that it must have been a pet project or a hobby of his, outside of the time he devoted to organbuilding. It is also known that Bach developed an interest in his work on the piano and even made certain recommendations as to how the construction might be improved.
Nevertheless, the piano at the close of the Barock period still remained remained a work in progress and it wasn't until 130 years later with the development of the iron frame and other vast improvments to the action by Steinway and others that the modern piano was born.
So why on earth do these people still insist on giving concerts of Barock keybord music on a modern piano when the harpsichord should always be the obvious choice?
This at least might make the casual listener/viewer realise that there is far more choice in realizing this music than just on a modern piano, and who knows, they might even enjoy it!
