Greetings, all. I haven't posted in a while - the past few years saw major changes in my life, plus this pandemic. I pretty much closed my studio for the past two years, only keeping one student.
But this student is now almost ready to start on the Bach Sinfonias. She has played all of the Inventions, and is currently finishing up the last two or three fugato three-voiced Little Preludes. She is very ambitious and hard-working, and is very focused on achieving ABRSM Grade 8 within the next few years. (Needless to say, she's playing a lot of material other than Bach as well.)
I wanted to get some input from my colleagues here about teaching the Bach Sinfonias.
Firstly, what edition(s) do you recommend for teaching the Sinfonias, keeping in mind that this is the student's first encounter with these pieces? When I studied the Sinfonias, I used a mix of Henle Urtext, Wiener Urtext, and Preston Orem Ware's heavily edited edition. Honestly, when I get a hankering to play a Sinfonia these days, I always grab the Ware edition, but sometimes I think it might be a little too "busy" for a Grade 7 student. One of my teachers has sworn by Busoni, and I certainly like to keep Busoni handy for interpretation suggestions, especially when working on the WTC. But, again, sometimes the Busoni edition looks a little busy.
(For the Preludes, I used a mix of Busoni, Henle, and Ware with this student. For the Inventions, we mostly used the Kjos edition edited by Kenneth Snell, with some Busoni here and there.)
So what edition do you all use for teaching the Sinfonias?
Another question is, do you teach all the Sinfonias, or just certain ones? I don't know that I want this student spending too much time on the Sinfonias; at some point I want to get her into the WTC. I'll definitely teach the C major, E major, G minor, and B minor Sinfonias, but I'm not too sure about the others. And I may sneak in some three-voiced dance movements and/or fughettas here and there. What is your approach to teaching this more sophisticated Bach material?
