Bach, Glenn Gould - Art of the Fugue - 70th Anniversary Edition
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Artist: Bach, Glenn GouldBrand: Sony
Edition: Music CD
Format: Limited Edition, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2002-09-03
Music Label: Sony
Free Music Notes for Art of the Fugue - 70th Anniversary Edition
Free Music Review: Bach Reincarnate?
Hit: 5 Stars
If you are interested in the Art of Fugue, get this organ recording by Gould and Tatiana Nikolayeva's rendition on piano. Forget about everything else. The latter version has two advantages: it contains the entire Art of Fugue (as well as the Musical Offering) and the recording quality is better. Those things aside, in everything from vision to virtuosity, Gould is far beyond his Russian competitor. Many people have complained about Gould's heterodox manner of playing the organ. It seems reasonable to me at least that though Gould chose to play the Art of Fugue on the one instrument that would give the separate voices, indeed, every note, dynamic equality and impart to them as much as possible the lyric quality of the human voice, he didn't feel compelled for those reasons too to alter his trademark staccato style. What we have here, then, is Bach's masterpiece performed with sound powerful and regal enough to do it justice (Contrapunctus VI is a great example), but with the clipped, clavichord rhythm that brings out like nothing else the playful personalities of which these fugues consist, emphasizing as Gould always does the conversational diversity and harmony that is the essence of counterpoint. Contrapunctus VIII, for instance, definitely a highlight of this recording, necessarily elicits a smile from the listener every time, it is played with such childlike frivolity. These, along with the rapid tempos, are Gould's artistic choices as he tries, not simply to perform the work, but to bring it to life, and I think he is successful. His Contrapunctus I is simply the greatest recording of this seminal fugue ever executed.
Not all is as desired, however. One clear instance in which a fugue defies Gould on this record is Contrapunctus III. Here Gould manages merely to transform what Nikolayeva's rendition has proven to be the equal and counterpart of Contrapunctus I into at best a handicapped half-brother and at worst a grotesque circus side-show. And of course the recording is incomplete. One cannot help but wonder just how the mysterious canons and especially Contrapunctus XIV, which Gould himself approached with fear and trembling, would have sounded from his organ. Unfortunately, the man who seemed to have such a close kinship to Bach proved not to have any share of his longevity and died young, bequeathing to us the definitive recording of the Goldberg Variations, but leaving this greatest work, as Bach himself did, unfinished.
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