gut strings – Bach | Music | Conducting | Ensemble Direction | Violoncello da spalla | Viola da spalla | Conducting

Ketchup Talk

This blog entry isn’t really about ketchup… it’s about vibrato, the intentionally produced pitch pulsation in a musical sound. Why ketchup then? Here’s the story. Recently I saw an image post on facebook by a musician from Germany. It was a picture of a page from a magazine or something, and the page had a quote in large font sizes that read: “Vibrato on every note is like putting ketchup all over the music.” I thought this is a quite good analogy— one that’s as good as it could get. I don’t mind ketchup at all— I just don’t use it as much, but once in a while I feel […]

Period Instruments and Bach

Bach, Early Music, Essays / Koji Otsuki

(Originally posted in February 2010) Sometimes people ask me if I like any Bach performances on the modern instruments. Somehow they expect me to say ‘no,’ but my answer is actually ‘yes,’ with an asterisk. Those people who expected me to say ‘no’ might have heard me lightly criticize modern performances on some occasions.. I don’t deny I do that sometimes. But when I did that, I must have had no expectation as to what I was going to hear. When I hear the metal string sound from the high-tension turbo-charged modern violin with a continuous vibrato playing Bach, out of the blue, I may get a bit displeased. But

Period Instruments and Bach Read More »