Word: kirkpatrick
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...weak point is precisely where the piano should have the advantage over the harpsichord, in the ability to "sing" a melody. Gould never succeeds in achieving a cantabile style, but seems like a pianist imitating the sound of a harpsichord. While this record does not displace Ralph Kirkpatrick's superlative harpsichord performance, it is the best piano version of a masterpiece...
Playing a harpsichord with two keyboards and seven pedals, Ralph Kirkpatrick presented representative pieces from Baroque masters of England, France, Holland, Germany and Italy. Many of these pieces were stylized dance forms, such as a Galliardo and a Pavana by England's William Byrd. The Pavana was a slowly paced, simple tune adorned with incredibly rapid scale passages and trills...
Since harpsichord strings are plucked rather than hit, the sound is at once precise and shimmering. In Francois Couperin's Le Carillon de Cithere Kirkpatrick achieved a remarkable bell-like effect. The instrument is also capable of melancholy expression, as in Couperin's Allemande la Tenebreuse. J. S. Bach was represented on the program twice: by his Italian Concerto, which adapts for solo harpsichord the complete concerto form; and by his Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, which harkens back to the craggy German organ style of Scheidt and Buxtehude. Perhaps the most electrifying music of the afternoon, however, was Jean Philippe...
Ansbach's Bach. The eighth annual Bach Week at Ansbach, Germany, brought a personal triumph to Manhattan Harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick, 44. Facing a firm Teutonic conviction that only Germans can play Bach properly, Kirkpatrick made a bold decision. While he was playing his morning performance, word came that Guitarist Andres Segovia was sick and could not fill his engagement that evening. Kirkpatrick agreed to take over the spot, scheduled a finger-breaking program : the Italian Concerto, the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue and the Goldberg Variations...
...crowd of 500 crammed the crusty old castle's gold and white Prunksaal-chosen for its fine baroque acoustics-and waited to see how Kirkpatrick would survive. Massive and leonine behind his shell rims, the harpsichordist filled the concerto with muted and lyrical brilliance, the fantasy with stringent clarity, the variations with authoritative grandeur. Then, dead tired, he faced the crowd of critical Bach addicts, smiled like a boy as they cheered, clapped and stamped on the floor with enthusiasm...