Joseph Ponte

It will be a long time before another student plays Bach as well as Joseph Ponte did in Paine Hall, Tuesday night. The Lowell House pianist has chosen for his two senior recitals the first part of Bach's moving Clavierubung. Tuesday he played the Partitas in C minor, A minor, and D major. Tonight in Paine Hall he will play the other three of the series.

As is usually the case with great works of art, mere descriptions are futile. These dance suites must be heard many times, studied, and lived with before they yield all their secrets. Still, they can be rewarding to the casual listener. Given a sensitive performance, the humor, the dignity, and the enormous energy of the Clavierubung are immediately evident.

Sensitive performances, however, especially by students, have become almost extinct. The tendency to interpret, rather than perform, Bach's music has resulted in streamlined superficiality on the one hand, and vitiating sentimentality on the other. But Joseph Ponte played with finesse and precision, as well as fidelity to the composer's intentions.

Most noticeable of Ponte's many excellences is his clarity of tone. Every note sounded clear and well defined--even in the most complicated contrapuntal passages. And there was a certain rightness about his dynamics: no exaggeration, but enough variety to insure sustained interest. Sutble nuances, rather than violent contrasts, emphasized the logical relationship of the various sections. His tempi, relaxed and graceful without being slovenly, provided a welcome relief from the usual machine-like regularity that can make Bach's keyboard music sound like finger exercises.

Ponte did not try to make his modern grand piano sound like a harpsicord. At the same time, there was no attempt to produce massive orchestral sonorities. Instead, he utilized the normal piano timbre--a simple, self-effacing procedure that frees the music from nearly all distractions.

Many musicologists went to hear Ponte's demonstration of late Baroque performance methods. These techniques differ from those in current practice principally in matters of rhythm. For example, certain combinations of notes which have equal time values in the score are not played equally. Determining the precise relationship of these "notes inegales" involved a great deal of research into the musical conventions of the Eighteenth Century. This investigation was more than musical pendantry. It enables us to hear the Clavierubung the way Bach wanted us to hear it. The question of which version is better must be left to the individual listener.

Except for some head-weaving and foot-stamping, the pianist kept himself well in the background. This was, indeed, a Bach recital, not a Ponte recital. Such a comment is only justified when a true artist has performed.