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From: lewi...@tuns.ca (David Lewis)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical.guitar
Subject: Re: Parkening cheating?
Date: 17 Mar 1995 01:33:54 -0400
Organization: Techinical University of Nova Scotia
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>dante rosati <d...@interport.net> wrote:
>
>>A student of mine has a two-cd set of Parkening's greatest hits, or 
>>something like that. On it is a recording of Bach's Prelude in E Major 
>>from the 4th Lute suite. It sounded pretty good, but I picked up my 
>>guitar to play along and soon realized it was in F Major. There seems to 
>>be three possibilities: either he is using a capo on the first fret (not 
>>out of the question, but what for?), or he tuned his guitar a semitone 
>>high, or he sped up the recording so that it would sound faster. Does 
>>anyone know anything about this?

    I've studied and performed Parkening's trancription of this prelude
and in doing so noticed that he used a lot of fingerings and slurs to
create this speed. I also have a video of parkening playing this piece
from Diane Bish's program " the Joy of Music " in which he does use a capo
and performs it at the tempo that has been questioned --- he does play it
at that tempo! The reason that he uses a capo, as far as I can figure, is
that the cantata that this prelude is also written for ( #129? ) is in F
major. As well, in his transciption he suggests that you practice the
piece in E but perform it in F with the capo. If you play his version you
will quickly realize that this makes the the performance of the piece with
a capo much easier in regards to the stretches etc. especially when you
practice it in E then play it a position higher. A last point of interest
is that Norbert Kraft asked me the same question a few months ago and
didn't question the recording technique but merely why he choose to use
the capo. Well, what ever. Hope this helps.

__________________________________
David Lewis
lewi...@tuns.ca
http://www.tuns.ca/~lewisda
__________________________________