I think it’s safe to say that there isn’t a single living performer or listener familiar with Baroque performance practice who hasn’t been either directly or indirectly touched by Dutch keyboard master and conductor Gustav Leonhardt, who died at midday yesterday in Amsterdam, aged 83, according to nrc.nl.
How we interpret, listen and appreciate the music of J.S. Bach, especially, has been forever altered, thanks to the tireless, selfless devotion of Leonardt and his frequent working partner, Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Together, they recorded the full set of J.S. Bach’s cantatas in what became the reference interpretations of our time. Leonhardt recorded nearly all of Bach’s keyboard works (the Goldberg Variations three times), and reached deep into the formerly obscure Baroque keyboard repertoire of France, Holland and Germany.
For a lover of Baroque music, it’s much like a soccer fan finding out that Diego Maradona has kicked his last.
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- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
On the surface, Leonhardt appeared and acted as a monk, single mindedly devoted to his cause, having forsaken leisure or luxury. But, despite the severe exterior, he was an enthusiastic, tireless evangelist. The polished, poised veneer hid a deep understanding of every note and its relationship to its fellows. He worked harder than anyone else, then made sure to hide the fact.
In a master class I once attended, he was at pains to point out, repeatedly, that the hard work of figuring out things like phrasing and breath and articulation was to be done in the studio, not on stage. He seemed to have endless patience that masked a drive that made a prolific recording and touring and evangelizing career possible.
The last piece Leonhardt performed in public, as an encore, was the 25th Goldberg Variation, at a concert in Paris last month. At the time, he announced that his health would prevent him from honouring the rest of his engagements in 2012. No one guessed that he only had a few more weeks left to live.
That variation can be heard here as the last of three, from Leonhardt’s landmark 1953 recording made at the Konzerthaus in Vienna:
I’ll leave the last notes to a section of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion from a 1968 film, The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach. Leonardt, seen conducting the choir, was cast as Bach:
MORE ON GUSTAV LEONHARDT ONLINE:
-A very moving tribute from Norman Lebrecht that ends with this paragraph:
As I am sitting writing this, I have in my hands a few of the letters between Leonhardt and myself – they are mostly effusive and overdone lists of neurotic questions and artistic storms-in-teacups (my letters) and brief, polite, and very much to-the-point responses (his letters). In my last one, I wrote him a quote from Tolstoy’s ‘Resurrection,’ in which the protagonist comes to realise that the world’s approval of his actions was impossible to follow if one had any worthwhile sense of personal morality and values. I brought this up to Leonhardt as a description of the conflicts faced by a young musician who wanted an audience and yet wanted to maintain artistic integrity. He wrote back: ‘I never mind these things and neither should you. Go into the world and be a musician, and you will learn what you need to. If I had even one person listening, or none at all, I would have not changed any of my decisions.’
-A sobre account of Gustav Leonhardt’s contribution to period performance by Lionel Salter in The Guardian
-A more colourful account of his life and contribution in The Telegraph
LEONHARDT’S FINAL RECITAL
Someone who was in the audience at Leonhardt’s final recital on Dec. 12 snuck a video of “Alemande sur la mort de Charles XI,” by Christian Ritter:
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
