BACH: Art of Fugue – Vladimir Feltsman, piano
Nimbus 2549/50 (2 CDs), 95:10 (Distr. by Allegro) *****:
This 1997 MusicMasters release garnered little attention at the time; after all, this particular work on the piano is not something countenanced in some circles, even though as we all know Bach left no instructions as to how or on what it would be played. There are certainly lots of attempts—it’s virtually open season on this piece, in any arrangement you might like to consider, and many are very successful. (My current favorite is the Calefax Reed Quintet on MDG.)
There are those recordings that simply put the players on autopilot and let them go, as if this fugal exercise of Bach’s requires nothing else but an intellectual appreciation. Wrong! This is as impassioned a piece as he ever put down, and Feltsman proves it valiantly. There is a dark, mysterious manner that he plays this work, always sensitive to the structural line but infusing a sense of drama that just might be of his own making; there is certainly a sense of drama inherent in Bach’s work, but I think that Feltsman unearths something that is not always obvious to other performers.
As far as the ordering of the movements go, the printed edition of 1751 has always been questioned, as it presents the pieces in order of successive difficulty or complexity, and the work is originally on open scoring with each voice on its own staff. And the perplexing question of how Bach would have completed the last quadruple fugue is always with us as well. Feltsman poses no new answers to these questions but takes the work as it is and comes up with a solution that, while not perhaps musicologically correct or even what Bach might have wanted, is dramatically viable and makes for a workable performing edition. Feltsman reorders many of the pieces within a basically established sequential reading according to the 1751 edition, but the incomplete fugue, done with emphasis and great drama, is left hanging bare in silence for a full 54 seconds after it ends. He then continues with Nos. 13a and 13b, the Allo mode Fugas that add a sprightly and satisfying conclusion to the whole, not unlike the effect of Mozart’s final passages in Don Giovanni after the protagonist is pulled down into hell. This is a stunning solution that all should hear.
The sound is wonderful, sans typical Nimbus reverberation since it is from MusicMasters [due to Ambisonics UHJ originals, which do not sound overly reverberant when reproduced properly on multispeakers…Ed.] , and we are grateful to them for bringing it back. May it have a long life indeed.
— Steven Ritter
