Two Bach Inventions.

I recently got a Yamaha Clavinova CLP-340 Digital Piano.  This piano came with a book of piano music, called 50 Greats for the Piano.  The difficulty of the pieces vary greatly, going from what one might consider a beginner piece to some ARCT-level pieces, if you are familiar with Royal Conservatory of Music grading-scheme.  My plan is to post here videos of me playing two of the pieces from the book each month with some commentaries. 


The first two pieces from the book is from J.S. Bach's Two-Part Inventions (No. 1 and No. 8).  Bach's Inventions are collection of thirty short keyboard pieces divided into two books - two-part and three-part inventions, where two and three refer to number of voices (N.B. the pieces from two-part inventions are called inventions, but the pieces from three-part inventions are sinfonia).  These are considered to be rather easy pieces to play, something you learn to prepare yourself for the Well-Tempered Clavier. 

I would like to conclude this post with a story and a fun-fact on the Inventions.  The story involves the famous Canadian pianist - Glenn Gould. For his first recording, the producer at the Columbian Recordings allegedly recommended something easy, like Bach's Inventions; however, Glenn Gould went for something a little bit difficult and a little bit obscure at the time - Bach's  Goldberg Variations.  Now for the little fun-fact on Bach's invention:  if you watched the original Thomas Crown Affair with Steve McQueen, which was a fantastic movie unlike the remake with Pierce Brosnan, you might have heard Henry Mancini's the Windmills of Your Mind, which was included in Thomas Crown Affair soundtrack.  I am not sure if it was intentionally or not, but the Windmills of Your Mind uses same motive as Sinfonia No. 15.  For comparison, here is the opening of the Thomas Crown Affair, with the Windmills of Your Mind playing and here is Glenn Gould playing Sinfonia No. 15.