Found a great Bach interpreter!

Another WTC I've always loved - particularly if you are in the mood for a slightly softer-edged, contemplative interpretation - is Edward Aldwell on Nonesuch:

Here's another set I've long admired, though the pianist is not well known:

QuasiUnaFantasia Possibly. I don't really know. It seems to be on a small label today "Musik Produktion Schwarzwald":

https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/das-wohltemperierte-klavier/hnum/7070596?lang=en

Yes, that appears to be a remastering of the same 70's recordings that were originally release on Philips.

Pete14 but I know the composer intimately, and he, himself, is baffled by all the B.S. theories around taking the rep’s, “perhaps I should’ve made it clear that these are only meant as a sleeping aid,” he once said to me!

😊

Pete14 What about Zhu?

Wow. Thank you for the reference and I confess my ignorance: never listened to Zhu Xiao-Mei before today. It became a favorite Goldberg, together with Gould, Jean Rondeau, Beatrice Rana… Btw, any one listened to Lang Lang Goldberg's? The first bars of the aria start beautifully, but then things get interesting…

I am in awe with Zhu Xiao-Mei. Had a quick youtube listen of a few snippets and the Art of the Fugue is monumental! Partitas, inventions, french suites, you name it, they are all wonderful. I will buy them all.

On the other hand, what I have listened of her Mozart, Beethoven or Schubert, does not move me at all. Bizarre. Again, @Pete14 : thank you for taking me out of my ignorance…

There’s no shortage of good Goldberg variations. I have many favorites. BTW, I like the late recording of Gould and hate the early one. Shows that the guy got calmer and wiser with the age. It’s a pity he didn’t re-record the other Bach works 😀

Of the more recent recordings of the Goldberg variations I think Vikingur Ólafssons is interesting. It's a quite sober and sometimes (too?) high tempi. But overall a very nice interpretation. He played it in my home city this vinter but unfortunately I missed it.

CyberGene BTW, I like the late recording of Gould and hate the early one.

+1

CyberGene like the late recording of Gould and hate the early one. Shows that the guy got calmer and wiser with the age…

Oh, come on, CG!

This is like saying you hate early Brando, “let’s face it, I coulda been a contender,” and prefer late -fat- Brando (The Island of Dr. Moreau), for you see, early Brando/Gould might’ve been a little rough around the edges, but also full of energy, bravura, passion, and testosterone-fueled balls; whereas, the late was paranoid, a little crazy, and thinking only one thing upon recording: show me the money! 😁

Whether the version on my shelf of Gould playing WTC is the early one, or the late one, I don't know. But I do know that he deserved being spanked with a deflated plastic chicken for it.

(Wondering who will get that one ...) 😎

QuasiUnaFantasia he has only one WTC, however there’s a very early mono recording of Goldberg from the 1955 and a re-recording in 1981. The former is unnecessary fast and absolutely ridiculous in almost every aspect 😀 I think at the time it was not a popular work, so kudos to Gould for popularizing it but I have to think really hard to come up with a more absurd recording than that, sorry Pete 😀

gould was the last necessary interpreter. langlang was ok, but extraneous.

it's a solved problem.

Very interesting thread.

vagfilm I am in awe with Zhu Xiao-Mei.

+1 (for what I've hear so far). I find Koriolov version great too. I also like Gould's 1955 recording.

On the other hand, I don't like too much Angela Hewitt's version or Simone Dinnerstein's one (which I thought I would have loved and bought as hard copy).

Unlike you all, I can't point to a reason why I like one and another or dislike something else. With such a small sample such as this, I am sure you can find a pattern, but believe me, when looking at the whole list of things that I like or not, it feels random. My piano teacher says that I like the ones in which the performer "meant it" rather than simply executed it pretending it to be in a certain way. In fact, I like/dislike some recordings, regardless of the scholarly-antiscolarly, rubato-strict, romantic-baroque execution with expressive-flat dynamics. Fascinating justification, which I choose to believe even if I don't have scientific proof of its truth. Not as much as a leap of faith if you compare with language: imagine someone declaiming a poem in your native language. You may or may not like the style, but even for the best actors you could immediately tell if they "meant it" (e.g. like it) or if they are just reciting it, no?

CyberGene

Your F Minor Prelude (#12 from Book 1) is played beautifully. Really. It made me listen closely from beginning to end.

Re the Gould Effect, I'm 71, Toronto born and raised; so as a child learning the piano it was impossible NOT to play--at least to try to play--Bach like Gould. I remain a fan of his Goldberg V., all three versions. And I like his Partitas as well as, horror of horrors, his Beethoven Sonatas and Piano Concertos. As for the Bible--the Well-tempered--I don't like much, or perhaps most, of Gould's rendering. Mind you: some of the conceptually challenging fugues, for example, the E major (#9) from Book 2, he really "nails," for want of a better word.

The many of the big names (Hewitt and Schiff come immediately to mind) leave me completely cold. The reason is simple: I want to hear the "architecture" or "the whole" when I listen to the WTC. (Like a well-played chess game?) I'm not particularly interested in exquisite ornamentation, delicate phrasing, particularly where it takes my attention away from the structural aspects of Bach's music.

That's a personal preference, of course. There's no "right" or "wrong" in musical taste, as far as I'm concerned. Every performer and listener is engaged in what (at base) is an exercise of their own personal imagination, and everyone's imagination is different. That's just how I see it.

I own at least 50 different CD versions of the WTC (Books 1 and 2). I stopped collecting once everything went online.

Here's a WILD (but wonderful) WTC 2 not yet mentioned above (Feinberg):

https://youtu.be/rAZJcpbDAxY?si=T1bB32pBBUZyagxV

Book 1? I find myself returning again and again to the poorly recorded and sonically reverberant Church version by S. Richter: He recorded the WTC a number of times. This is the only version I like (and I probably shouldn't):

https://youtu.be/1osi_pQcUdM?si=3NfBLAOYIcmv_Wnb

Here's MY own sequenced WTC 1 and 2:

jlg I think I remember your WTC recordings from PW, a tremendous job 👏🏻

Thank you for your other recommendations. I actually know Richter well since he’s my mom’s favorite, as a teen she watched him live in Bulgaria and was lucky to be seated in a chair next to the piano (because it was overcrowded and they had to accommodate everyone and instructed her to not make any noise whatsoever or she’ll be out) and always remembers that experience as some magic that has happened to her, how every note he played was divine, etc 😉 So, I started my Bach WTC journey with Gould and Richter but I immediately dismissed the latter for using the sustain pedal. However, from the distance of time, I seem to have been just a little dogmatic boy 🤣 Richter is a genius and I think his playing has influenced that of Koroliov which is why I alluded to “Soviet Bach School”.

I’m still on a crossroads with Hewitt’s WTC. Sometimes I love her sentimental approach, only to find it questionable (and even random) the next day. But the Fazioli piano sound in her recordings is the best piano I’ve ever heard for Bach.

I envy your mother!

Schiff eschews the pedal. Barenboim goes crazy with it. Richter’s somewhere in the middle. Koroliov over Hewitt in my books. No comparison. My entirely subjective preference.

CyberGene

CyberGene Richter and Gould: an interesting philosophical contrast. Richter famously hated recording; Gould, as we all know, thought the concert hall a decidedly inferior musical tradition and means of communication; and he LOVED recording. (Nonetheless, as far as we can tell, they seemed to like and respect each other.) I like both media: live and recorded. I guess I prefer the concert hall, not because it's "live" music, but because a great hall with a great piano, a great pianist, and a great seat = great audio. I have a pretty good audio system, but even the best audio is second best to a great concert hall. The problem is, as always, that many listeners don't have ready access to great halls with great instruments and a listener's preferred interpretations may only exist in recorded form. With that framework in mind, Gould's preferences are common sense, but probably nothing more. Recording entails of necessity editing of course, and nowadays anything is possible. Not a problem, in my books; although I prefer artists to be honest about what KIND of editing, and the EXTENT of it. It's a little disconcerting to young aspiring pianists who may routinely practice six or eight hours a day to discover, for example, that the perfect octave-playing and four octave runs in thirds they might of heard in a recent recording of last movement of Brahms's B flat concerto were the result of extensive editing, not hard practice!

QuasiUnaFantasia Does anyone have experience with the Gulda WTC recordings from the early 1970's? They were unusual in that the microphones were placed extremely close to the strings (on a Bösendorfer Imperial). I have only recently heard about these recordings, but not yet listened to them.

I've been listening to Gulda's WTC for decades, since I was ten. Bk II was my first ever classical music recording purchase. I'm an unusual case in that, by the time I got to Gould, his performances were "wrong" to me, which is the reverse of how it is for most people with the WTC, I imagine. Gould is usually the standard.

As you say, the recordings are extremely dry and mic'ed right over the hammers. I personally think it really fits the music. It strips away everything but the counterpoint. Every other recording of WTC, regardless of the performance, sounds at least a little mushy and overly thick to me in comparison.

Gulda's performances are often idiosyncratic. He kind of has two speeds: slow, soft and deliberate, with lots of una corda; or rapid and hard. To be sure, he exhibits a bit more subtlety in between, but he's strongly pulled toward either of those two poles.

An example of an outlier performance is Fugue II, Bk I. Most performers take a medium tempo and use more legato phrasing. Gulda plays it slower, softer and much more detached, gradually ramping up the volume until he's practically pounding by the end.

His tempo is some of the most regular I've ever heard. He's a human computer, and that's not a slight, as I really enjoy the precision.

I've read his playing described as more vertical, emphasizing how the counterpoint lines up in any given beat, rather than horizontal, emphasizing individual lines. I feel this is an accurate assessment.

I'm in a weird place with Gulda. For me, it's familiar. Listening through either book is like comfort food. But I also know that his performance is at times really unusual. It's a case where, for me, what's weird is normal.

Argyris I think I've never listened to Gulda, or maybe I've done but not systematically so. Might give it a try just to familiarize myself with his Bach.

CyberGene He's an odd case when it comes to Bach. Apart from a few one-off live performances, some of which are available on YouTube, he basically recorded both books of WTC and then nothing else by the composer. No complete English Suites (I think he did the third one live) or French Suites, none of the Two-Part Inventions or Sinfonias, no Goldberg Variations, nothing.

It's like out of the blue running a marathon, turning in an impressive time, and then, despite this accomplishment, never doing it again.