Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Does playing Bach without pedal benefit the music?

Truly....a failed attempt that communicates deep emotion. Too bad you have never felt that.

Why would anyone want to play such musical tomfoolery when they could just play Moscheles?

Moscheles was later, right?

I never play Bach with pedal, esp. the Goldberg-variations, it gives a 'romantic' halo to something that just was born ut of sheer finger-legato and pure polyphony, everything more, that is: 'dramatic' rubato/histrionic dynamics/wafts of pedal/and the likes, are detrimental to the essence of Bach's music/style/taste.

Who uses pedal in Bach today to produce 'romantic' halo? It's only used to connect notes that otherwise can't be connected and thus to avoid disjointed phrases. I don't know of any contemporary performance or recording of the Goldberg that makes use of the pedal to create washes of romantic fog.

As for 'dramatic' rubato and rhythmic distortions (agogic hesitations, desynchronizations and the like), harpsichordists deploy far more of that in Baroque music than pianists - because they don't have the capacity to change dynamics, or to bring out polyphonic lines, or to 'voice' chords etc.

I completely agree. This topic is one that annoys me because if as a keyboard player you wanted to create the sounds that Bach truly wanted then you would perform his works on the harpsichord only. So by performing Bach on the modern piano, one is obviously already taking artistic liberty with what Bach actually wanted. Use the pedal or don't use the pedal; either way, neither recreates the sound that Bach would have heard while composing.

It's ok to use no pedal, but I feel it's also okay to use a little judicious pedal, but not a whole lot. Avoid blurring harmonies or unwanted dissonances.

Great video (like all videos in this series):

Good stuff!

Hmm, interesting (though frequent) topic. I'm wondering if it would be worth closely examining Bach's organ music to see if/how the writing differs from his harpsichord music. (In terms of fingerwork issues, and what can be manually connected.)

If you are playing Bach on a piano, that in and of itself is far more anti period performance practice then using the damper pedal.
Bach can really benefit from use of all 3 pedals on a modern piano. Just like any other music, your ears guide your pedaling. My opinion is it is lazy to simply not use pedal in Bach, or perhaps it is a student who has been intimidated out of using pedal because a member of the pedal police has gotten indignant at the idea.