Well, Wilhelm Freidemann was no slouch either. Just found this little gem for my evening music on YouTube, and it includes some … well… “harmonic stunts” worthy of his more famous younger brother. I just wish these performances were done on nice big German 5+ choir harpsichords with some good 16’ choirs, as these works deserve, and not these dainty French things.
…and yes there ARE big German harpsichords (I SAW this one being built by Mr. Goble in his shop at Oxford when I was there!):
… “dainty French” is … well lets just say two words in this case are unnecessary … like “fay French” … just say “French” Heeeee!
Well true… point taken. But “French” doesn’t per se mean “dainty.” Widor was certainly very French, and there is absolutely nothing “dainty” about his organ symphonies. Then again, the organ to which he had access could move more wind than an Airbus A380. My complaint is really about the fact that all the Bach’s had access to harpsichords that were very large and which would have incorporated at least one 16’ choir, if not more. CPE had access to one such large Mietke double at the court of Fred the Gross, JS had access to a large Mietke and, I believe, another large instrument of six choirs with two of those being 16’ choirs at Zimmermann’s coffee house in Leipzig, and so on. Plus both Bachs called specifically for a “strong fundament” (i.e., 16’ choirs) for their harpsichord works and particularly for the concerti. I loved the early Spanyi recordings of some of the CPE Bach concerti on a Hass double, where the 16’ choir thunders its way through the Wq 6 and 12 concerti to great effect (Affekt), and the Hyperion recording of CPE’s La Folia Espana variations on the Hass triple is “heavy metal” at its very best, and I can only dream what JS Bach’s wonderful d minor concerti (BWV 1052 & 1063), or even better, CPE’s Wq 23 would sound like on the kind of instruments that they were written for. My big beef with all these recordings on the dainty little French things is precisely the lack of effort to record on properly sized large instruments… ok, rant over.