tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65474197251944220012011-11-18T23:49:57.144+01:00Robert Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06682308357096122931noreply@blogger.comBlogger511100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547419725194422001.post-66953839705268104782011-03-04T01:13:00.000+01:002011-03-04T01:13:03.190+01:00

Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart: Chamber Music for Strings, 1787-1791.  by Danuta Mirka. (Oxford Studies in Music Theory.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009 from NOTES (2010):  Danuta Mirka has produced an ambitious book that seeks to combine disciplines whose triple union would have seemed improbable some decades ago. Admittedly, music theory and cognitive psychology will not seem

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The Online Classical Music shop ClassicsOnline.com sells many of my earlier CD releases, also for download.

Robert Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06682308357096122931noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547419725194422001.post-56377476491522747232010-06-26T01:28:00.000+02:002010-06-26T01:28:11.058+02:00

Here is a link to the most recent video on my YouTube channel (channel username "earlymus"). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wej4lUxhjrA At the moment I have 87 videos of live performances, as well as a few single takes from studio situations.

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My thanks to Attila for correcting me on the person of Christiaan Huyghens, I had mixed him up with his father Constantijn.

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http://ericbarnhill.wordpress.com/

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Recorded in 2005 during an open-air concert, on my Cristofori-style fortepiano by Keith Hill.

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First MovementSecond MovementThird MovementRobert Hill, fortepiano, Leon Berben, harpsichord, Musica Antiqua Köln. This is a studio recording made ca. 2003.

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Recorded 2002. Virginal by D. Adlam

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Robert Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06682308357096122931noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547419725194422001.post-67887422254180992022008-04-25T01:31:00.004+02:002008-04-26T00:15:19.300+02:00

J. S. Bach: Adagio from Violin Sonata in G Minor BWV 1001, in my transcription to C Minor, recorded live in May 2004

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Recorded in May 2007 as part of my recital program "Scarlatti in London".

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This is variation XI from the closing movement of the D-Major Sonata KV 284.

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From time to time I perform on a modern Steinway, here is one excerpt.

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J. S. Bach: Sinfonia in g BWV 797, Robert Hill, fortepiano after Cristofori (K. Hill, 1998)

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This fortepiano after the instruments of B. Cristofori was made by my brother Keith Hill in 1998. I prize the warm "golden" sound of the brass strings on this piano. The recording was made in Spring of 2004 as part of a "Bach-Handel-Scarlatti" recital program on the Cristofori.

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An update of an earlier post, this time as a YouTube video with scrolling score.

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www.webmetronome.comI like it because it allows you to work with BPM slower than the usual 30-40 BPM offered by most metronome designers. Programmable beat patterns are also cool.Postscript: Having received some rather astonished reactions to this post, here a few of my thoughts on the subject of metronomes. I am quite sure that musicianship meant something else than we are generally accustomed

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Last week the Musikhochschule Freiburg held a "Tastenfest", a five-hour keyboard extravaganza in memory of Hans-Jörg Koch, a colleague who died last year, much too soon.This performance on clavichord (by Keith Hill, 1993 after Hubert) of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's closing Probestück, the Fantasia in C Minor, took place in a large concert hall for ca. 650 people. It was sandwiched between two

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I couldn't resist adding this, even though it is only in spirit related to the subject of this blog.This picture of a leaf made by laying it on silver nitrate coated paper may well be one of the earliest photographs ever made, dating back to the 1790's or early 1800's, from the circle of the Englishman Henry Bright. See the New York Times article

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I regularly offer masterclass style instruction in advanced basso continuo performance, concentrating on the style of the realisation. Here are a few short excerpts to convey the feeling of the class.

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Francis Planté (1839-1934) This film contains a short excerpt of Planté playing Chopin's Etude Opus 10 Nr. 7. The film is silent newsreel footage taken during Planté's recording session in 1929. Planté, who heard Chopin play, may well be the oldest keyboardist of the mid-19th century who can be seen actually performing with preserved audio. For the oldest keyboardist, and possibly the oldest

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There is now general agreement that the decorative doodle at the top of an autograph manuscript of the Wohltemperirte Clavier is a diagram encoding a well-tempered tuning. As the three papers below show, there is not a consensus on how to interpret the diagram.In a nutshell, the diagram is understood to represent instructions on how to temper the twelve fifths in a tuning system. Counting from

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link to facsimiles of preludes from J. S. Bach's 12 Small Preludes

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Historical performance practice of a different sort. This is the only historical video I am familiar with of someone demonstrating a Pleyel harpsichord. José Iturbi (1895-1980) studied harpsichord with Wanda Landowska at the Paris Conservatoire. He plays Rameau's Rigaudon, Musette and Tambourin (the film appears to have been made around 1940).

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Contrapunctus I from the Art of FugueThe picture compares the well-known Hausmann portrait of Bach (1746) with a recent computer-aided reconstruction by Caroline Wilkinson for the Bachhaus Eisenach. From Der Spiegel, February 28, 2008. The following picture shows how she arrived at her reconstruction.

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In this video I demonstrate my method for "capturing" the quality of movement in a piece by doing a "Tonsatz" or continuo-like reduction, leaving out as much ornamental or decorative information as possible. Once captured, I "overlay" the full version over the practiced-in Tonsatz version, which helps me to understand quickly the final result I want to achieve.

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In honor of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, here the Adagio in E-flat Minor from his Württemberg Sonata in E-flat Major.

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From a recital on April 28, 2004, here the Largo from J. S. Bach's transcription BWV 972 of a violin concerto by Vivaldi, performed on a fortepiano after Cristofori by K. Hill (1998).And for comparison, from a recital on Nov. 13, 2005, the same Largo performed on harpsichord.

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F. Chopin Preludes for Piano Opus 28 (1839)I came across this outstanding web resource tonight: the Chopin Early Editions collection of digitized facsimiles put out by the University of Chicago. Here is the linkhttp://chopin.lib.uchicago.edu/

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One of the most significant historical recordings is surely this Welte-Mignon piano roll recorded by the 80-year-old Carl Reinecke in January, 1905. Reinecke is thus probably the oldest instrumentalist on record. With a 35-year tenure as conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, Reinecke occupied a central position in German musical life in the second half of the 19th century.Reinecke is

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In February 2007 I played a fortepiano recital entitled Haydn in London at the Neumeyer-Junghanns-Tracy Collection of Historical Keyboard Instruments in Bad Krozingen, near Freiburg. I used several instruments, among them a fine Broadwood from 1798.Here the encore, an Adagio by Haydn:

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In honor of Händel, here the Prelude to the E-Major Suite, recorded in Aachen in Nov. 2005.

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Here the opening Adagio of Händel's F-Major Suite, performed on my fortepiano after Cristofori. Händel is known to have had regular access to a Florentine fortepiano at the home of friends of his in London from the 1730's onward.

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Francois Couperin: Allemande for Two Harpsichordsin a concert from 13 February 2008 at the Musikhochschule Freiburg, performed with my post-graduate harpsichord student Yeon Jeong Jeong as part of her final recital program.Instruments: two Taskin-model harpsichords by Keith Hill, 1993 & 1998

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is the title of a fortepiano recital program I performed at the Musikhochschule Freiburg on 28 January 2008. On Dec. 24, 1781, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Muzio Clementi performed in a competition with each other at the court in Vienna, by command of the emperor. This program is a reconstruction of a "virtual" competition between the two composer-pianists, in order to directly compare them as

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As the second work in the Mozart versus Clementi program from 28 January 2008, I played Mozart's C-Major Sonata KV 330:Allegro moderatoAndante cantabileAllegretto

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Mozart intended that certain piano concerti of his could be performed as chamber pieces with solo strings. Here from a performance with my chamber ensemble L'Ottocento from April 2006, the Larghetto from his A-Major Concerto KV 414.

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In May 2007 I presented a keyboard recital entitled Scarlatti in London, in which I focussed on the reception of Domenico Scarlatti's solo keyboard music in England in the later 18th and early 19th century. I performed on harpsichord and two fortepiani. Here from Muzio Clementi's Gradus ad Parnassum (1817), Nr. 42: Finale Allegro vivace.Instrument: Neupert (ca. 1988) after L. Dulcken (Munich ca.

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My most recent CD release is on Naxos: W. F. Bach Keyboard Works Vol. 1: Twelve Polonaises, Sonata in D Major, Fantasia in A Minor. In January 2008 this disc was awarded the Diapason d'Or from Diapason magazine in France.Here a live performance of the E-Minor Polonaise, recorded during the Fest der Innenhöfe in Freiburg in July 2005. This was an open-air performance in the courtyard of the

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On Feb. 4, 2005, I played a duo-recital with Gottfried von der Goltz at the Musikhochschule Freiburg. As the final piece in the program we played Francesco Veracini's Violin Sonata in F Major. Here the Introduction.

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On February 4, 2005 I played a duo-recital with Gottfried von der Goltz, leader of the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and Professor of Violin and Baroque Violin at the Musikhochschule Freiburg, on the theme "Fantasia". I included a set of Giles Farnaby pieces performed on a lautenclavier (a harpsichord with gut strings) by Keith Hill (1993).Here a short Prelude in C Major:

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Not strictly a live performance -- I took advantage of a short break during a studio recording in 2006 to try a solo piano version (on a 1930s Bechstein) of this classic.

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From my harpsichord recital in the Anna-Kirche during the Aachener Bachtage in Aachen in November 2005, the Andante.Harpsichord by Keith Hill, 1997, after P. Taskin, 1769

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Today is the 249th anniversary of the birth of Jean Louis Adam, an important figure in the establishment of the piano in the conservatory curriculum. Eclipsed in fame by his son, the composer Adolphe Adam, J. L. Adam (1758-1848) was highly respected in his own time, not the least for his Méthode de Piano du Conservatoire (Paris, 1805).Here, in a concert from 2005, his Romance from the Méthode.

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On Oct. 25 and 26, 2007, the Symphony Orchestra of the Freiburg Musikhochschule, under the direction of Prof. Scott Sandmeier presented a program of transcriptions of works by J. S. Bach. Prof. Sandmeier and I jointly developed a program concept that in part juxtaposed Bach's original version of a work with its transcribed version. So, for example, the 6-part Ricercar from the "Musical Offering"

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This recording is now 15 years old, and ought to be in the archives, but the file happened to be available while I was experimenting to get this blog online. I performed this improvisation in May 1993 as part of my inaugural recital for my position as Professor of Historical Keyboards at the Musikhochschule Freiburg. The improvisation, together with the complete 1993 live performance of J. S.

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