In August 2007, I set off on a 14-month recital tour performing Johann Sebastian Bach’s masterpiece The Well-Tempered Clavier to audiences in 25 countries around the world. It took a lot of stamina — not just physically getting myself from one place to the next, but also going on stage and performing night after night, from memory, some of the most demanding music ever written.
Many things from that tour are unforgettable. A car in Seoul driving in front of the concert hall, its windows down and music system blaring out a Bach prelude (which I recognized as my own interpretation) as though it were hip-hop; performing in London’s Royal Festival Hall, knowing that my mother had died a few hours before in Canada; working with piano students in South Africa; asking the audience in Beijing to please be quiet; playing in the small country church in Dornheim, Thuringia, where the young Bach married his cousin Maria Barbara in 1706; and having a beetle slowly climb up my bare arm while playing a fugue in the Chateau de Chillon on Lake Geneva. What made the biggest impression, however, was the way Bach’s music is universally loved, in places as diverse as Macau and Bogota. Something in it speaks to all humanity.
It took me 11 years to perform and record all of Bach’s major keyboard works — a total of 17 CDs. When that project was finished, I began to receive e-mails asking why I hadn’t included his last, unfinished masterpiece, The Art of Fugue. This omission was partly because my record label, Hyperion, had already recorded it with the late Tatiana Nikolayeva, and also because Bach never specified that it was to be played by a sole keyboard instrument. He wrote it down in open score, one voice per stave, but it might have been no more than an intellectual exercise. It has been adapted for four voices, for strings and even saxophone quartet. But these were, I suppose, flimsy excuses for putting off what I knew would someday be inevitable.
Photo: Lin Ya-ti, Taipei Times
照片:台北時報林亞蒂
Any performer knows that unless you have a fixed concert date in your diary for a new piece, it will rarely be learned as thoroughly as it must be for public performance. It was when I was approached by the International Piano Series at London’s Royal Festival Hall to give two recitals seven months apart, next month and next May, that I knew the time had come to push myself to learn The Art of Fugue.
One thing bothered me before I opened the score. I had heard extracts over the years, performed by various soloists and ensembles, but the work itself never seemed to grab me in the same way as the rest of Bach’s music does, on first hearing. Could it be that, at the end of his life, Bach had finally written something boring? It was hard to believe. I was determined to apply everything I had learned about Bach to see how I could make the work come alive.
My first hours spent with the first Contrapunctus (the title Bach used for the succession of fugues that make up this work) were not as I had expected. In late February, I was rushed to hospital in the US while on tour and had major surgery. For 12 days I was unable to do anything much but sleep, let alone think of playing the piano. Finally my strength began to return, and, being away from home and my scores, I printed out an obscure edition from the web — not something I would normally do, and it meant that later I had to transfer it all to a proper copy.
Photo: Lin Ya-ti, Taipei Times
照片:台北時報林亞蒂
I began as I always do: carefully writing in a fingering that allowed me to distinguish the four lines of music, and shaping each voice in turn. It was a painstaking task. My hostess, an amateur pianist, was amazed at my thoroughness, thinking that an experienced player could perhaps dispense with such things. Over the months to come, I changed my mind many times, and went through several erasers, always notating everything carefully. It simply is not possible to play this complex, horizontal music without the necessary discipline. Each voice must sing, and one voice often takes a breath in a different place from another.
I soon realized that The Art of Fugue makes The Goldberg Variations seem like child’s play. Unlike The Well-Tempered Clavier, there are no catchy tunes to which you can put words (as 19th-century music professor Ebenezer Prout did). There are no preludes that might serve as a bit of relief to the seriousness of the fugues. Each of its fugues and canons is in D minor; many are in the same time signature. What there is, and what gives it an almost terrifying magnificence, is one fugal masterpiece after another — gradually growing in complexity until the final, unfinished quadruple fugue.
Can it be presented successfully in performance? Several European concert promoters have told me they do not want it, either because they have had “a bad experience” (I presume that means a boring one), or perhaps because they are afraid that audiences would not understand it. And yet in Seoul [two weeks ago], I performed the first 10 “Contrapuncti” to more than 1,000 young kids, who listened avidly.
Photo courtesy of The Wikimedia Commons
照片由維基共享資源提供
The first time I managed to play these through at home without stopping, I got goosebumps. It could not be further from boring. It is true that Bach never wrote The Art of Fugue for the masses. Even at the end of his life, he was pushing himself further in his art, though his contrapuntal style was by then considered outmoded. Its perfection is such that when I perform it, even the slightest cough feels like a stain on a beautiful canvas. The composer and critic Wilfrid Mellers put it perfectly when he said that, in The Art of Fugue, Bach “plays to God and himself in an empty church.” Few pieces have such simultaneous intimacy and grandeur. By performing and recording it over the next few years, I hope that music lovers around the world will come to share my state of wonder.
(By Angela Hewitt, The Guardian)
二○○七年八月,我開始一連十四個月的巡迴演出,在世界二十五個國家,為觀眾彈奏巴赫鉅作《十二平均律曲集》。這要花上大量的耐力─不僅只是奔波的勞累,還有一晚接著一晚背譜登台,彈奏一些史上最難的曲子。
在巡迴演奏途中,有許多難忘的事。在首爾有一輛行經音樂廳的車,其車窗是搖下的,巴赫的一首前奏曲(我認出是我的詮釋),就像大聲播送嘻哈樂曲般,從車內傳出。在倫敦皇家慶典音樂廳演出時,得知母親在數小時前於加拿大過世。在南非與鋼琴學生一起工作。請求北京觀眾肅靜。在德國圖林根多恩海姆一座鄉村小教堂演奏,該教堂正是年輕巴赫於一七○六年與堂妹瑪麗亞‧芭芭拉結婚之處。另外,有一隻甲蟲在我於日內瓦湖上西庸古堡彈奏賦格時,緩慢地爬上我裸露的手臂。然而,讓我印象最深刻的是,巴赫的音樂是這般受到全世界人民的喜愛,連多樣化如澳門與波哥大也不例外。其音樂蘊含一些所有人類共通的特質。
我花了十一年才完成演奏與灌錄巴赫所有重要的鍵盤作品,總計共有十七張音樂光碟。當這項計畫完成後,我開始收到e-mail,問我為何未包含巴赫最後一部未完成作品─《賦格的藝術》。獨漏此作品,一部分是因為我的唱片公司─「亥伯龍」─已錄製過它,演奏者是已故鋼琴家塔蒂安娜‧妮可拉耶娃;另一部分是因為巴赫從未註明此作品要由單一鍵盤樂器演奏。他以分譜─即每個聲部有各自的譜表─的方式記譜,但或許它只是一部需使用高度智力的練習曲罷了。該作品已被改編為四聲部、給弦樂器演奏,甚至還有薩克斯風四重奏的版本。這些皆是我將該作品束之高閣的牽強藉口,而我知道總有一天我還是無可避免地要面對它。
任何演奏者皆知,除非你在行事曆裡已敲定演奏新曲目的演奏會日期,不然很少能夠在公開演出中將曲目練到一定程度的熟練。直到倫敦皇家慶典音樂廳「國際鋼琴系列」音樂節找上門,要我在下個月與明年五月,彈奏兩場間隔七個月的獨奏會,我知道這是督促我該好好練《賦格的藝術》的時候了。
在翻開樂譜之前,有一件事困擾著我。我多年來已聆賞過不同獨奏家與小型合奏團演奏過這部作品的選曲,不過這部作品乍聽之下,似乎從未能像巴赫的其他音樂般讓我神往。有可能是因為巴赫在晚年時,最終寫了一些無聊的東西嗎?簡直是難以置信。我下定決心應用我鑽研巴赫曲目的一切知識,一探我能如何賦予這部作品生命力。
一開始練習第一首賦格(巴赫在這部由一系列賦格組成的作品,將每首賦格的標題稱為「對位」)後,發現與預期的不同。二月底,我在美國巡演途中被緊急送醫,並接受一個大手術。這十二天當中,我除了睡覺外什麼都不能做,更不用說想到彈琴了。終於,我的元氣開始恢復,遠離家鄉與樂譜的我,一反慣例,從網路上列印一個晦澀的樂譜版本,這意味著接下來,我必須將它轉換為一份像樣的樂譜。
我以一貫的方式開始:仔細將指法記錄在譜上,如此讓我分辨音樂中四個聲部的線條,並且逐一分析每個聲部。這是一項艱苦的工作。我在當地住宿的女主人,是一位業餘鋼琴家,她對我縝密的思慮大感吃驚,因為她認為一位有經驗的鋼琴家或許可能會省掉這些步驟。在之後數個月的日子,我數度改變心意,並經歷多次塗改,總是仔細註記一切。這部複雜且橫向的音樂,若是沒有具備一定音樂素養的音樂家,是不可能彈奏的。每個聲部都要能歌唱,而且一個聲部的呼吸經常與另一聲部錯開。
在鑽研《賦格的藝術》不久後,我發現這部作品讓《郭德堡變奏曲》顯得像是兒童的曲子。《賦格的藝術》沒有像《十二平均律曲集》中可以搭配歌詞的動聽旋律(十九世紀音樂學教授艾比尼瑟‧普勞特就有這麼做);它也沒有前奏曲以緩和賦格的嚴肅。它的每首賦格與卡農都是D小調,且大多是同樣的拍號。這部作品所涵括的以及其幾乎令人生畏的浩大,是一首接一首的賦格大作─由一開始的主題,逐漸發展其複雜性,直到全曲最後一首未完成的「四聲部三重賦格」。
可以成功地將這部作品以表演方式呈現嗎?許多歐洲音樂會經紀人告訴我,他們不要音樂家演奏它,可能是因為他們有過「不好的經驗」(我猜這意思應該是指它的無聊程度),或也可能是他們擔心觀眾無法理解它。然而,我兩週前在首爾彈奏前十首「對位」,現場超過一千位小朋友則聽得津津有味。
我在家中首次一鼓作氣彈完這部作品後,不禁起雞皮疙瘩。這部作品真是太有趣了。巴赫的《賦格的藝術》,從來不是為大眾所寫的。即便在他生命的最後,他仍不斷追求藝術的極致,雖然其對位風格在當時已被視為是過時的。它的完美,就好像是當我演奏它時,一個細微的咳嗽聲就足以沾汙一幅美麗的油畫。作曲家兼樂評人威爾弗里德‧梅勒斯有一句話說得好,他說在《賦格的藝術》中,巴赫「僅為神及自己,在空無一人的教堂內彈奏此曲。」僅少數樂曲可以媲美這部作品給人一種既私密又宏偉的感受。在未來數年的演奏與錄音,我希望全世界的愛樂者將能一同分享我的奇蹟之境。
(《衛報》/翻譯:林亞蒂)
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