A Year of Bach

A conversation with political philosopher Rebecca Lowe (The Ends Don’t Justify the Means) about objectivity and musical beauty, the differences between American and British choral singing, and her skepticism about historically-informed performance. Lowe shares favorite Bach works (the E minor flute sonata, the “Great” G minor organ fugue) and her broader musical tastes including Britten, Strauss, Mozart, opera, Stevie Wonder, Chet Baker, and Angela Hewitt.Albums discussed:Angela Hewitt, Bach: The Art of Fugue (Hyperion, 2014)Spotify · Apple Music · YouTubeEmmanuel Pahud and Trevor Pinnock, Bach: Complete Flute Sonatas (2008), which opens with the E minor sonata, BWV 1034Spotify · Apple Music · YouTubeEmmanuel Pahud and Stephen Kovacevich, Pahud plays Debussy, Ravel & ProkofievSpotify · Apple Music · YouTubeGlenn Gould, A Consort of Musicke Bye William Byrde and Orlando GibbonsSpotify · Apple Music · YouTubeGerald Finley and Julius Drake, Barber songsSpotify · Apple Music · YouTubeKarl Richter, Bach cantatasSpotify · Apple Music · YouTubeTranscript:[00:00:00]Evan Goldfine: Hello, and welcome to A Year of Bach. My name is Evan Goldfine, and today my guest is Rebecca Lowe, a political philosopher whose work centers on freedom, rights, and equality. She’s currently a philosophy senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and her excellent Substack is called The Ends Don’t Justify the Means, where she warns about the troubles of consequentialism in a genial way.Rebecca came to philosophy after earning a degree of music at Cambridge, so today we’ll talk about the different pleasures of philosophy and music, and also plenty about Bach. I’ve asked Rebecca to bring her strongest-held opinions, and perhaps if we’re lucky, we’ll see how we’re frustrated by each other’s tastes.Rebecca, welcome.Rebecca Lowe: Hey, thanks so much for having me, Evan. I’m excited about this.Evan Goldfine: So I wanted to start with a little praise for your writing and podcasting. I find your prose to be very lively and bouncy while engaging with deep and sometimes troubling subjects. It’s sort of an interesting strategy about keeping [00:01:00] discussions engaging.I sense you also take a lot of joy in the philosophical argument. Am I onto something here? Does it echo with your enjoyment of music? How did you get your voice?Rebecca Lowe: Oh gosh. I mean, that’s a big question, isn’t it? So I grew up in a family of philosophers. Both my parents are philosophers, so I think philosophical argument is something that I just imbibed.I was talking to a friend, in fact, our mutual friend, Henry Oliver, about this yesterday, and about the idea of how you learn how to do philosophical talking, philosophical arguing, and I think even though the content of a lot of the conversations I had at home growing up was philosophy, I think even if that hadn’t been the case, I think I would’ve had a childhood full of philosophy because the ways in which my parents talk and the ways in which I talk are very philosophy imbued.One of my close friends one time made this joke. She was introducing me to someone, and she said, “Hey, this is my friend Rebecca, [00:02:00] who likes to start her sentences, ‘It is the case that...’” And this just summarizes me very well. So I think I have a way of talking which is broadly the way in which philosophers write, and I think beyond that, though, I am very keen to make philosophy intelligible to people who don’t know about philosophy.I like very plain, straight, dry prose. I’m one of these people who loves, for instance, American novelists and American philosophers who other people find to be overly nitpicky and very, very plain in their writing. I’m probably the only person in the world who thinks John Rawls is a beautiful writer.But I do attempt, at least when I’m writing philosophy, to write it how I talk. So I’ve already ruined that by saying I talk in a philosophical way, but the best bit of advice I was given about writing was from my supervisor at Cambridge, who’s one of my favorite people, and we can talk about him a little maybe, ‘cause he was a great musician.But he one time told me, “Just read out everything that you write.”[00:03:00] And I think this is the best advice you can give to someone who wants their writing to be more understandable.Evan Goldfine: Yeah. So how did that philosophical house be filled with music? Were your parents also musicians? You ended up pursuing music before a proper philosophy degree.What’s your origin?Rebecca Lowe: This is a good question. My dad was very musical. He taught me how to read music and play the recorder. He also had a flute that a friend of his had given to him and he’d never really played, which I think was the main reason for me starting to play the flute. My grandparents had a piano.We used to go visit them every other weekend. I was obsessed by playing the piano. My mom’s probably will listen to this, my dad sadly isn’t alive anymore. But my mom will probably listen to this. She may disagree with this, but I actually think I was really the only person in the household who regularly listened to music.Both my parents loved classical music, but I was obsessed by listening to this stuff from a very young [00:04:00] age. We had some very good audio cassettes. My grandmother, like I say, she was a very good pianist. So music was around, but I do think, and I’ll probably say this as some kind of individualist, I think it was also my own driving of my interest.Evan Goldfine: What hit you early on, as apart from your siblings or your parents?Rebecca Lowe: I think yeah, my brother. He hit me early on.Evan Goldfine: In a different way.Rebecca Lowe: Yeah. I think some of the earliest things I can remember listening to, we had a very good, I totally forgot this until you mentioned it, actually. We had a very nice recording of the Carnival of the Animals.And I really liked the colorful ways in which animals were depicted. I’ve gone on to have a bit of a philosophical interest in this idea of what music can depict. And actually, yes, so I did, my undergrad is in music at Cambridge, which is the worst place to go if you wanna do performance.Although being a performing musician in Cambridge is amazing. You have endless resources and opportunities to make music with wonderful musicians. [00:05:00] But the music degree is not any performance at all. It’s entirely applied math, basically, as the Americans say. It’s very much analysis. You don’t listen to any music in any of your lectures.If you’re doing any composition, it’s in order to show analytical skill, not to actually express yourself through composition. The thing I was interested in was really aesthetics, so the philosophy of art, with a particular focus on music. I did get to do some of that in my second and third years, but I found it very... I mean, I like math, but I was not intending to do a math degree, and doing music at Cambridge was effectively doing that.I think it made me into a better musician. I think it made me a more rigorous thinker. I was already good at writing arguments, but I think this helped me in various ways. But it’s a bit of a funny thing to have done, I think. It has abstract value, and I think being excellent at anything has application value, but-Evan Goldfine: So you learned your voice leading, you learned your counterpoint, you could write [00:06:00] according to the rules that Bach created. But did you create anything that was meaningful?Rebecca Lowe: No. So I was thinking about this. I don’t know what your view is on this. Over the past few weeks I see people tweeting about these AI created Bach chorales and Bach fugues. I haven’t looked at the fugues, but I had a very, very quick look at one of the chorales that everyone was lauding as this perfect, beautiful bit of voice leading, and it’s absolutely dreadful.I mean, there were parallels in the first bar.And I’m like, the problem, because I had this, you know, drilled into my mind such that, you know, you look at the outer parts and you think, look for contrary, you look for these little things, right? The most simple stuff. I mean, there’s also this hilarious thing where they’re saying it’s, you know, harmonically interesting ‘cause it’s got a Neapolitan sixth.And I’m like, mate, that’s the thing you learn how to do when you’re like 13 and you’re doing grade five theory. It’s just hilarious. So I have this view, and I think it’s the same that you see within the literary community, that because so many [00:07:00] musos and so many literary people, same philosophy actually, have really are just busy hating on AI.They haven’t lent their skills to the benchmarking process.That’s my guess. Like, the idea that the AI companies are putting out this dreadfully done chorale. Whereas, as you say, this is like, this should be the easiest thing for AI to do because we have all the rules.We know those, a billion rules, and 20 years on I can still remember quite a few of them, such that I can look at it and straight off be like, “Mistake, mistake, mistake.” Where are the people, the professional musicologists doing this?Evan Goldfine: They’re not going into the labs. But I also think that they’re, you know, there’s not so many people that have the ear to be able to hear it.Rebecca Lowe: Oh, but I don’t... I mean, I can’t hear it at all. I have zero ear. I can just do it by looking at it.Evan Goldfine: Oh, really?Rebecca Lowe: And I didn’t learn to do it by-Evan Goldfine: You couldn’t have heard that it’s a-Rebecca Lowe: No.Evan Goldfine: But you-Rebecca Lowe: No. God, no. Oh, well, actually, to be honest, no, that’s not true. I could, actually. But I’m not... So half of the people on my course at [00:08:00] Cambridge would have perfect pitch.Perfect pitch is one way. Being able to note these things aurally is one quick way into doing this kind of analytical approach. For someone like me who doesn’t have that, you put the idea of lis

Guitarist and composer Miles Okazaki has been an important guitarist in the New York jazz scene for over twenty years. His latest album is Boomtown, featuring a large chamber jazz ensemble playing his jagged Americana. Miles is best known for his solo-guitar recording of the complete works of Thelonious Monk, and we discuss the art of rhythmic placement in Bach and Monk.Featured are excerpts of Miles’ performances of Bach’s BWV 1005 and one of the Fugues in A Minor.LinksMiles Okazaki* Website: milesokazaki.com* Instagram: @okazakistudio* YouTube: milesokazaki playlistsBoomtown (Pi Recordings, June 26, 2026)* Apple Music* BandcampWORK (2018), the complete Monk compositions on solo guitar* Bandcamp* Full liner notes, track-by-track commentary, and pressArtists mentioned:Andrés Segovia · Julian Bream · John Williams · The Beatles · Jascha Heifetz · Glenn Gould · Thelonious Monk · Charlie Parker · Charlie Christian · Art Tatum · Brad Mehldau · Matt Mitchell · Igor Stravinsky · Nat King Cole · Ella Fitzgerald · Jimmy Scott · Julie London · Frank Sinatra · Coleman Hawkins · Iannis Xenakis · Dan Weiss · Kim Cass · Patricia Brennan · Steve Cardenas · Don Sickler This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yearofbach.substack.com

Faye Arthurs spent two decades at New York City Ballet dancing Balanchine, Robbins, and Wheeldon. She originated a role in Wheeldon’s Scenes de Ballet while still a student at SAB, and she danced Robbins’ Goldberg Variations. She now writes dance criticism for Fjord Review and Air Mail, and does archival work for the George Balanchine Foundation.We talk about how ballet dancers count from the stage, the special pleasures and challenges of dancing counterpoint, and how and why Bach succeeds (and sometimes doesn’t) for choreographers. Faye’s writing: https://fjordreview.com/blogs/all/new-yorks-finestFaye’s website: http://www.thoughtsfromthepaint.comWorks Mentioned: Robbins, The Goldberg Variations (1971), Fanfare (1953). Balanchine, Concerto Barocco, Agon, The Four Temperaments, Episodes, Symphony in Three Movements. Wheeldon, Scenes de Ballet. Eliot Feld, Organon (2001). Boris Eifman, Musagète (2004). Paul Taylor, Esplanade, Promethean Fire. Mark Morris, Falling Down Stairs.People Mentioned: George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Christopher Wheeldon, Wendy Whelan, Jock Soto, Suzanne Farrell, Kyra Nichols, Tiler Peck, Glenn Gould, Mavis Staples, Yo-Yo Ma.Transcript:​[00:00:00]Evan Goldfine: Welcome to the podcast, A Year of Bach. My name is Evan Goldfine, and today I welcome the ballet dancer and dance critic, Faye Arthurs. Faye spent two decades with the New York City Ballet, dancing the works of George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and Christopher Wheeldon at Lincoln Center and around the world. She originated a role in Christopher Wheeldon’s Scenes de Ballet when she was still a student at the School of American Ballet, and danced Robbins’ famous adaptations of the Goldberg Variations, and we’ll be talking a lot about that today.Faye has since retired from professional dancing and now writes dance criticism for The Fjord Review, and she is based in New York City, and today from New Hampshire. So Faye, welcome.I’d like to start by talking about counting as a ballet performer. So the works that you danced were choreographed to through composed pieces.In the moment of dancing, what’s your relation to the music as it’s being performed in the pit?Faye Arthurs: That’s a great question, and it [00:01:00] is really dependent upon which piece you’re talking about because some pieces of music are much more difficult to count than others, to play than others. There’s a, a lot of ballet, s- ballet originally started with using so much very even simple 4/4 time structures.The Petipa ballets, the great ballets, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, you really don’t have to count those so much. It’s very even. It’s, three reprea- repeats of one phrase, and then there’s like a, a tag into the next thing, it’s very, like you do this one step left and then you do a transition into the next sequence.Th- there’s not much counting that you have to do in-Evan Goldfine: So you’re thinking more in phrases for certain pieces and in counting for others. So it’s depending on the choreography and the music itself.Faye Arthurs: It really is. Okay. A ballet like The Goldberg Variations, we’re counting a lo- it’s a lot of sixes.We’re sticking with the musical meter from Bach, but then within that, there’s a lot of slow [00:02:00] walking sections where you really don’t have to be counting. Like even though you’re stepping on every note, you’re not in your head always counting, becauseEvan Goldfine: it’s just- So you have the tempo in your head.Y- ... the tempo’s in your body, and you’re going step. And is there a musical cue that you’re waiting for to do your next move?Faye Arthurs: It’s just at a certain point you just know these things. Like you, you yes, there is. There is a cue and a count for everything. But you don’t have to actively be counting in your head all the time.You know what I mean? You can be thinking about all sorts of things. You can be thinking about what you’re having for dinner after the show, at a certain point in certain dances, like it’s just so through your bo- almost like a, a breath or a pulse-...Faye Arthurs: If you know the sequences and they’re not that complicated.That being said, you’re dancing Balanchine to, choreography to Hindemith or- ... von Webern and you are counting 21s, 17s, what, you are in your head the whole time you are counting. Actually I was gonna talk maybe with you later about Concerto Barocco, which is Balanchine’s- Surefamous ballet to Bach, [00:03:00] and that is one where you can tune out for some sequences, and then you really have to be counting hard when you’re going in counterpoint, against people counting differently from you doing a similar step. So there, there... I feel when you’re new in New York City Ballet, ‘cause we have so much rep you’re counting all the time, and then it, when you’re like y- 20 years in, you don’t need to count most of Barocco.You’re not actively counting. You’re thinking about things, or you could be counting. You’re humming the melody, something like that. But I’m not in my head going, “One, two, three.” DoesEvan Goldfine: that make- Is that hard? Yeah, of course. Is it harder for a, a counterpoint piece because maybe the melody is a little bit more obscure?Are you focusing more on... In Tchaikovsky you can kind of, “Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da.” Exactly. Okay, you know exactly where you’re gonna go from one-Faye Arthurs: Exactly ...Evan Goldfine: to the other. But when you’re moving in counterpoint, the melody can sometimes be obscured. So does that make it trickier for you on stage?Faye Arthurs: Well, you’re going against it purposefully. And that was really Balanchine’s great game. It’s like you’re carving [00:04:00] your own channel into the score, and I think that’s part of what makes Balanchine endlessly dazzling. It’s- ... the audience doesn’t necessarily know that we’re counting fives against eights, or fives against sixes, or that half of the stage is in a three-count phrase and half of the stage is in a four-count phrase, but the music is in six. So we’re both- Right ... not in, we’re both not in the composer’s intended speed limit or, time signature. Mm-hmm. So it’s really people are like, “What is it about that keeps me coming back to Barroco or something?”And I think it’s that. I think when you finally can start uncovering some of those games that he’s playing it’s just, for me, dancing it was endlessly fun. ‘Cause you felt like you were stamping your own time signature into a piece, it was like if we are switching roles in a ballet you, you might be feeling a new...different things are accentuated when you’re cutting against a score. You feel it through your body differently, it’s [00:05:00] because your body links up so much with breath and for me, and I think for most- New York City Ballet dancers at least, ‘cause music really is the focus at City Ballet and more than a lot of companies.And, and modern pieces for example, where there is no music or the piece is not choreographed to music or it’s improvisational and you can do whatever. But at, at City Ballet the music is the top of the pyramid, and so we’re all there because that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to like, make music visible in a sense.And I think these little, these little cross currents in the tempos and counting against the actual time signature of the piece is part of just, you know, cutting your way through something, it’s- Yeah ... it’s fun. It just feels, it, it feels like you have a different relationship to a piece of music once you’ve done different tracks through it, different step tracks through it.Yeah. I don’t know. I fo- I found it really fun.Evan Goldfine: When you’re on stage and you’re dancing a [00:06:00] three-part and your compatriots also on the stage are dancing in four- Mm-hmm ... and the music’s in six, is there something where you have to tune out your other dancers - Yeah ... on stage so you don’t fall into their rhythm?Faye Arthurs: For sure. There’s a l- there’s a lot of tuning out, but I thought what was more interesting to me was the more I did Baroque, oh, and you’ve got the, the threes versus the fours versus the sixes. The more that you can hear it all at the same time is the most - Yes ... fun, and you’re like, and you know when you’re going, but you’re predicting and, because of the nature of the step, you’re meeting up on certain things doing the same step because things overlap. And it’s just very fun when you feel like you can see it all. Like a chess game.Evan Goldfine: Yeah. One of the beauties of digging- You would think. Yeah, one of the beauties about digging deeper into Bach’s music is that, when he’s going with three and four part fugues , you can hear the individual lines and also how they’re working together. Yeah. So in a way, it sounds like Balanchine and Robbins are able to reify that same thing that we’re listening to for the different parts in the fugues into the music itself as [00:07:00] he’s, as they’re choreographing it on stage.Faye Arthurs: Completely. Robbins was very, very strong on the fugal form. There’s a Benjamin Britten ballet. It’s, what is it called? It’s b- it’s The Guide to the Orchestra. Oh my God, I’m-Evan Goldfine: Oh, the, theFaye Arthurs: children’s- Fanfare. It’s called Fanfare.Evan Goldfine: Okay.Faye Arthurs: Yeah, Fanfare.Evan Goldfine: Yeah.Faye Arthurs: And the, the finale is a fugue, and every dancer is an instrument in the orchestra, and in the fugue, they’re doing the track of their instrument, and it’s really, it’s a really great primer for children, but it’s fun to do as well because you’re, like, seeing...You’re a visual representation of the orchestra, and- Right ... and you’re doing those lines. Yeah. It’s pretty cool.Evan Goldfine: Yeah. When certain pieces are conducted in certain styles, the, the orchestra’s playing. They have to play Tchaikovsky different from Bach, different from Hindemith and Arvo Part and whoever.Faye Arthurs: Yeah.Evan Goldfine: But d- do you find that the orches

Lillian Gordis is a Franco-American harpsichordist born in Berkeley, California, and based in Paris. Her latest album is J.S. Bach: Partita No. 6, English Suite & Preludes and Fugues, released in 2026 on the French label Artalinna, and it’s one of my favorite records of the year. Listen on Apple Music | SpotifyIn this episode, Lillian talks about her approach to phrasing on the harpsichord: articulating independent voices, singing through her repertoire in rehearsal, and always resisting automatic performance. We talk about the technical challenges of performing on instruments that vary widely from venue to venue, and her decision to record from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book II.Visit Lillian’s website: lillian-gordis.comAnd subscribe to the show’s Substack: A Year of BachArtists discussed:Harpsichordists / Early Music* Pierre Hantaï* Gustav Leonhardt* Nikolaus Harnoncourt* Jordi Savall* Le Poème Harmonique* Gesualdo Six* Graindelavoix* Il Giardino Armonico* La Petite Bande* Kathy PerlPianists* Sviatoslav Richter* Andras Schiff* Glenn Gould* Lucas Debargue* Piotr Anderszewski* Alexander Kanterow* Daniil Trifonov* Yunchan Lim* Robert LevinTRANSCRIPTEvan Goldfine: [00:00:00] Welcome to the podcast, a Year of Bach. My name is Evan Goldfine, and today I welcome Lillian Gordis, who recently released an excellent double album of Bach on the Harpsichord. It features the sixth English Suite, the sixth Partita, and other selections from Bach’s deep catalog for the keyboard. This is her third album, and the other two feature works of Bach and Scarlatti. Lillian’s been focused fully on the harpsichord since childhood, and as a teenager, she moved to France to study with the great harpsichordist Pierre Hantaï, where she continues to live. She joins us from Paris today. Lillian, welcome.Lillian Gordis: Hi. Thank you for having me. I’m delighted to be here.Evan Goldfine: At first I’ll jump into fan mode for a minute and say that I think you pull off something pretty special in this recording and that’s reflective of your whole approach. I think your phrasing stretches notes and compresses others, and the two hands are phrased very independently from one another. And there’s no shame in fermatas or hanging on rubato for an especially long time. For me, it creates a sort of floating feeling and as I’ve written in the newsletter, it becomes sort of [00:01:00] trance-like, and I get really locked in. I think it’s really rare to hear that in a recording. I’d love to hear a little bit about your approach to phrasing and whether I’m picking up on something that you’re putting out there.Lillian Gordis: Yeah. First of all, thank you. I mean, I appreciate all of that. That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. I think the harpsichord is an instrument. You know, if you have a beautiful harpsichord, it sounds great. If you have a less beautiful harpsichord, it sounds less good. But, and I love harpsichords, but it is an instrument that has dynamic limitations and projection limitations, which is particularly an issue in obviously our modern world, where you’re playing in relatively big halls. And you’re playing recitals, which didn’t exist — you know, historically at all. The format did not exist at the time this music was written. And so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to make the harpsichord an instrument that can project as far as possible and as widely as possible. I think the approaches for doing that on recording and in concert are a little bit different just because of the proximity of [00:02:00] microphones as compared to, say, the last row for an audience member. But I’ve kind of — I try to imitate voice as much as possible, particularly vocal ensembles and the way that polyphony and counterpoint come in and out of focus in the way that a vocal ensemble can do, which is obviously not necessarily the most self-evident thing technically to do on the harpsichord. But that’s something that really deeply appeals to me. That’s kind of what I hear in my head, especially with Bach, but also with other composers. And so figuring out, not just between the hands, but also between voices — where can I have a little bit of micro stagger? Where can I have more or less attack? I think a lot about the end of the note too, which is not necessarily something that came up a lot when I was studying, but the end of the note on the harpsichord when the jack comes back down and you stop the resonance — you know, that creates an accent too. And so using a lot of substitutions and shifting to get as smooth a sound as possible. And then [00:03:00] when you want to create an accent, you can, but starting from this linear, horizontal perspective rather than a keyboardistic, vertical one. That’s been something I’ve spent a lot of time working on over the last five, ten years.Evan Goldfine: What is a substitution or an adjustment on the harpsichord?Lillian Gordis: It just means that when you play the note, let’s say, you use your thumb. And then we don’t have a pedal, so you can’t pedal and then shift to the next note. So you have to use your hand as a pedal. So you might shift one and then shift to three without replaying the note so that you can move your hand. Or you might go one to five. Sometimes I shift not just in order to be able to reach, but because it rebalances your hand. So then the next note, you have more control over both the release of the previous note and the attack of the next one. So I shift and substitute a lot, probably almost an excessive amount. I also have relatively small hands, so if I want to control all of that, I need to — for example, I don’t write any fingerings in because it would be too complicated. Like I have [00:04:00] to really just memorize the hand patterns and positions of what I want to do. And then it doesn’t really matter which finger you end up on, as long as you’re in the right hand position.Evan Goldfine: Yeah.Lillian Gordis: So yeah.Evan Goldfine: And when you talk about an attack — because you really can’t create a dynamic shift on the harpsichord — what does that look like when you enter the note?Lillian Gordis: It just means you can create kind of a pop when the plectrum hits the string, or plucks the string, I should say. And if you pluck a little bit faster, so with more attack, you’re really close to the keyboard, but you’re still going to have a little bit more bite that’s going to pop and come out within the texture. So a lot of what we do is: how much do you want? Very little attack. A lot of attack. And then how quiet can you make the end of the notes so that the next thing is either very quiet or louder? And I think making that next step to thinking about it with every voice — and I work through every voice by itself and figure out, okay, if I were one person playing this line, what do I want it to sound like? Then I add the next [00:05:00] voice or the combinations of voices. I’ll do like bass and alto, tenor, soprano, all these different things. And I also sing all the time when I’m practicing. And I found that singing when I’m practicing gives me a really good sense of projection. So like if I arrive in a new venue, I will sing through the rehearsal, which I think organizers sometimes find kind of weird.Evan Goldfine: You’re not going to do this during the show, right?Lillian Gordis: No, I promise. I promise. But it, you know, it sounds a little weird, but the human voice is so much more natural in so many ways. And so it gives me a really great sense of like, how long can this note go? How long should this note go — in a way that if I’m just listening to the harpsichord, I’m going to get kind of sucked into where that resonance point drops off.Evan Goldfine: Yeah. When you’re singing, are you singing normally the soprano line or is it any voice that seems to be the most resonant one in that moment when you’re rehearsing?Lillian Gordis: I am usually jumping around between the lines to sing the thing that I want to hear the most. When I’m practicing at home, I will try to sing through each part as I’m playing it. [00:06:00] Obviously that gets kind of difficult because some of it is not super singable, but I do my best. And then when I’m kind of at that final stage of just repeating this, when I get to a new space, I’m usually jumping around so that I’m singing the thing that I want to make sure I’m hearing.Evan Goldfine: I feel like we’re getting really technical here, but I find that it’s interesting in explaining how your approach comes in. So when you’re thinking about these lines, it’s really thinking about four independences with your fingers almost. If there’s a soprano alto tenor bass, you have to create the four phrases and lines within your ten fingers as they’re moving simultaneously. So how is that working between your brain and your fingers? Is it rote in the moment? Is it so memorized? But I feel like if it’s too memorized, then it could kind of suck the life out of the performance. How do you deal with that dichotomy?Lillian Gordis: So, I mean, yes, this is the big challenge, particularly in three and four part music, where it’s fully written through. Of course, you have music where the counterpoint is less [00:07:00] consistent or it comes in and out of focus more. Honestly, throughout most of the harpsichord repertoire, there’s still this kind of golden thread of counterpoint that you’re still feeling in all of it, regardless of exactly how it’s notated.Evan Goldfine: Yeah.Lillian Gordis: For me, I think the danger as a keyboardist is that you can fall back on something that’s kind of vertical that you do memorize. It’s like, okay, I have two hands and I need to just — remember, kind of as I said earlier, kind of keyboard basically what I’m doing. And I think that’s where something becomes dangerous because you don’t actually remember exactly where your line is going. And that’s when things start to come apart or lose meaning. And so for me, the consistency of that has r

In this episode of A Year of Bach, Evan talks with keyboardist Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya about her new harpsichord album Transformations, which explores Bach’s adaptations of works by composers including Marcello and Vivaldi. The conversation ranges from Bach as arranger to the expressive possibilities of the harpsichord, the freedom and discipline of interpretation, tempo choices, practice, and the influence of pianists like Sviatoslav Richter, Glenn Gould, and Alfred Cortot.Links worth clicking on:* Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya’s website* Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya, J. S. Bach: Transformations: Apple Music / Spotify artist page* Lillian Gordis, J. S. Bach: Partita No. 6, English Suite & Preludes and Fugues: Apple Music / Spotify* Alfred Cortot: Bach-Cortot, Arioso from Keyboard Concerto in F minor, BWV 1056, Second Movement* Sviatoslav Richter, Richter The Master - Bach: Apple Music / SpotifyTranscript:Evan Goldfine: Hello and welcome to the podcast, a Year of Bach. My name is Evan Goldfine, and today I am welcoming Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya.Alexandra’s a Russian born keyboardist, now based in Amsterdam. In early 2026, she released an excellent album of Bach on the harpsichord.It’s called Transformations, and it was released on the Linn Label and it features Bach’s adaptations of other composers’ works, including Marcelo and Vivaldi. Alexandra’s playing through on this album is exciting throughout. There’s a constant sense of being pulled forward along with the music, a nice sense of pace.So today we’ll talk to Alexandra about her thoughts on Bach as arranger and the different virtues of harpsichord and piano, when playing Bach, and how to choose the right tempi when, the scores don’t tell you what to play. So Alexandra, welcome to the podcast.Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Thank you for having me here.It’s a great opportunity and chance to speak again about Johan Sebastian Bach yeah, we get to play a lot, but, we should speak about his, we gottaEvan Goldfine: talk about,Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: yes, absolutely.Evan Goldfine: So all keyboards are introduced to Bach in their early studies. Were you drawn to his music in the very beginning?Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Well, I started to play piano when I was four and a half. And I actually carried on until I was 16, only with piano playing and then when I was 16, I started to play harpsichord and carried on playing Bach on piano and harpsichord too. And then it was joined by organ and Clavichord as well. I think the music of Bach always comes with me. And it’s great to have it along.Evan Goldfine: What’s drawing you to perform Bach on the piano versus the harpsichord? I mean, it’s a choice that you have. There’s so many beautiful recordings on both instruments. But you chose to record this on harpsichord, what drew you particularly?Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Well, I personally think that music by Bach can and actually should be played on any musical instrument. it’s, you know, the one famous Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter, the greatest, he’s the greatest Yes. In one of his interviews. so he said that Music of Bach is like a fresh spring water that cleans and refreshes our ears.And I think this is very, very right sentence Yes. To say about we all need music of Bach. And as I grew up, listening to the recordings, of Bach mostly played on piano, so I was exposed only to piano, until I became 16. And among those recordings were for the greatest Sviatoslav Richter, as well as Maria Yudina, the quite important pianist she studied around the same time as Shostakovich.And of course, Glenn Gould was a big hero, for all of the pianists. and, still he’s a absolutely genius.And then of course you can agree or disagree with his interpretations. But, it’s, it’s absolutely incredible the ability, how he hears music, how he hears all the complex polyphony, which Bach writes.So then, coming back to the point, that’s until my 16th, I was only exposed to piano and then I started with harpsichord. And that of course opened completely different path, for me. talking about the harpsichord, it’s. Quite a challenging instrument to make it sound expressive.Evan Goldfine: Yes.Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: I think due to the mechanic of the instrument, which is, quite, unexpressive because, it you, so the, the harpsichord? Yeah. So it’s a keyboard instrument, which makes sound by plucking the strings. So you basically push the key down and the string is being plucked and it doesn’t matter how hard or how soft you push the key, that will not affect the sound, which means it’s theoretically, it always comes at the same, dynamic and at the same time, we know from Bach that his main demand on playing harpsichord was that it has to be a very singing instrument. So the way of playing has to be very singing and so this is quite challenging for when you face a harpsichord. as I mentioned, for example, the clavichord, which was around the time, and it was Bach’s favorite instrument, so he had it in his room and he practiced on it every day, and he made his sons practice on it as well, and they all loved it because of completely different nature of the instrument. That’s a very expressive instrument. Yeah. So the clavichord, so It’s a like a small, very, very quiet version of piano. So you press ahits the string and it stays there until you press the key, which means you can not only do dynamic on the instrument, but you also can affect the dynamic while you are on the key. So it’s the only keyboard instrument which you can make vibrato on. That is very, very specific. Yes.Of course, it’s not a concert, instrument, but, just with this knowledge of the expressivity in dynamic. So we, I think we have to really try and transform it into. in the harpsichord as well. And so with the harpsichord, of course, we havedifferent tools, how we can make the, using expressive not only by using different registrations on manuals.This is one of the tools, but not the main one. I think that,Evan Goldfine: So if you can’t freely. create any kind of dynamic range. Does it make you play more with rhythm and placement of the notes? Does that become a more important part of your expression?Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: so I think the length of the notes is extremely important.So for example, where we have to play a polyphony even if it’s only two voices. So we have to make a difference between the sound in one voice comparable to another one. And so we manipulate it with the lengths of the notes and also with the timing, which is crucial and very, very important but I personally believe so that when I play harpsichord, I have to imagine dynamic much stronger and much more precise than when if I would play it on the piano because there is nothing, nowhere to hide. So. While playing harpsichord or with a piano playing, we can hide behind the beautiful sound behind the pedal. So there are,Evan Goldfine: so you can change the dynamic range and that means that the note placement may be less emphasized or, whether you get a run exactly right because you, if you’re pedaling and all these notes are holding together. You have this beautiful cordal shape Exactly. That’s coming around. And with the harpsichord it’s just stark. and exactly. You only have one choice. Yeah.Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Yes, And so we have to use lots of over legato, which is, very important to make the sound as long as we can, and to make this difference with the lengths of the notes as well as timing.Also to know exactly what is the phrasing, what we want to say, and so what is the dynamic? And I think that harpsichord, you know, as a still a live instrument. So it sort of listens to your imagination a lot. ‘cause when I play, so if I imagine dynamic, even if I don’t do anything like theoretically, but I feel that the instrument reacts on this and somehow follows that line, which is great.Evan Goldfine: I’ve noticed that sometimes , harpsichordists will, as opposed to piano maybe, roll the notes a little more on chord so it creates a little more length.So, they’re not hit exactly the same time. Is that a strategy that you use when you’re thinking about harpsichord versus piano?Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Yeah, so I think you can totally use it on the piano too. Mm-hmm. It is, and we know that they use it a lot like also in the 19th century. Yeah. So this, it’s a music of Beethoven, so it’s totally allowed and appreciated.It’s just, you know, in the 20th century, everything became quite strict. And so people started to be afraid to play what’s not exactly written in the music. Actually the way the further back we go, the freer. It was. Yeah.Evan Goldfine: I guess with Gould, again, now we’re free again to do whatever we want.was he an inspiration? I know I don’t hear a lot of Gould in your playing, butfor better or worse. Right. You know, he was his own thing. And that’s great that your ownAlexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Yes.Evan Goldfine: So did that kind of freedom that he showed allow, do you think that we’re all kind of children of Glen for that freedom that he was creating?Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: In a way yes, but I think when the harpsichord came back, and with the Leonhardt generation, it was quite strict still. and so it’s now that I feel that, it’s releasing a game and that people play both piano and harpsichord, and that is a great thing, because it was some time when the musicians were quite strict, so we only play harpsichord in only certain way. So everything round would be like not allowed or, Not appreciated.Evan Goldfine: Yeah.Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: I think now we, we, because the generation of young players, it’s, it’s good to see that people really, really Become more free. I,Evan Goldfine: I just heard Lillian Gordis in concert.I don’t know if you’ve heard her albumsAlexandra Nepomnyashchaya: No. No. No,Evan Goldfine: she’sa young harpsicordist, with a new album from last year. Excellent stuff. and Pierre Hantai, I think you studied with,