Whether or not Bach's keyboard music should be played on a modern piano is a subject that has been debated for so long there would appear to be nothing new to say about it. What should have been the last word was spoken long ago by Rosalyn Tureck. This music, she said, is essentially abstract, and can therefore be played on virtually anything.
Tureck's own legendary 1953 recording of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier is now available on four CDs from Deutsche Grammophon (463 305-2). You can read a mini-debate on its merits at www.amazon.com. Despite the boxed-in mono sound and some residual tape hiss, it is incomparable. The individual character Tureck gives to each of the 96 tracks is totally astonishing. It converted me overnight to what she calls "the bible of Western music."
Glenn Gould: A State of Wonder
Sony Classical Legacy
SM3K 87703
This repackaging of the two recordings Gould made of Bach's Goldberg Variations offers remastered versions of both. They date from 1955 and 1981 and are very different. But what is particularly valuable is the inclusion of a third, "bonus" CD. This contains the interview Gould gave to music critic and radio journalist Tim Page in 1982 discussing the two recordings. It's hilarious in places, but Gould's thoughts on Bach, and on his younger self playing this music, is something all music-lovers should possess. The first version was one of the most famous recordings ever made, selling in enormous numbers, often to people who'd never bought a classical record before and maybe never did again. But Gould in the interview is rather embarrassed by his youthful excesses, and some critics have indeed called his interpretation eccentric. Those who have long loved it will be hard to persuade of the 1981 version's superiority, however, especially with Gould singing along very audibly on many tracks. The "bonus" CD ends with 12 minutes of takes from the 1955 recording sessions during which Gould demonstrates how God Save the Queen and The Star-Spangled Banner can be played simultaneously so long as you begin half-way through the first. All in all, these three CDs are pure gold. They would make the ideal Christmas present for just about anyone you know, yourself included.
Volodos: Solo Piano Works
Sony Classical
SK 89647
Music promoters have for 20 years been struggling to find a pianist with the popular appeal of Glenn Gould. A current favorite is the 30-year-old Russian, Arcadi Volodos. Here he plays two Schubert sonatas, numbers 1 and 18, with great tenderness, and ends with Liszt's transcription of the penultimate song in Schubert's Die Schone Mullerin cycle in which the miller drowns himself. This sad ending is especially appropriate in that these recordings were the last ones made in Vienna's venerable Sofiensaal before it burnt down in 2001.
Murray Perahia: Songs without Words
Sony Classical
SK 66511
Murray Perahia: Bach Keyboard Concertos
Sony Classical
SK 89690
Perahia also includes four Liszt transcriptions of Schubert songs on the first of these CDs. The CD is otherwise occupied with 15 of Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, so beloved of mid-19th century amateur and concert pianists, and four of Busoni's piano versions of Bach choral numbers. All items are played with Perahia's usual unostentatious artistry, and might even succeed in giving Mendelssohn's deceptively smooth-sounding style some new admirers.
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