Rating: 4/5
Review:
A fine recording - with some reservations
This is a fine recording in many ways, but I do have some
reservations about it.
Rinaldo Alessandrini has brought together a very interesting
programme here; he has taken free-standing preludes and fugues which were
mainly composed as technical exercises for Bach's students from a great variety
of sources and paired the preludes and fugues by key – sometimes pairing pieces
from widely differing times and sources.
It works very well indeed, giving a varied and rewarding programme of
(to me) largely unfamiliar pieces whose acquaintance I am very glad to
make. He plays with real care for each
piece's meaning and structure, and this is clearly a labour of love by a fine
scholar and musician.
What slightly takes the edge off this disc for me is
Alessandrini's phrasing. I am surprised
to have to say this of a musician whom I admire very much and whose work I have
loved over the years. However, there is
often a slight slowing or halting at the end of a phrase which in Bach I find
hard to take. It disrupts that wonderful
pulse which beats, at different rates, through the whole of Bach's music. Here the pulse seems to stumble rather too
often for me and this throws me out of the music. Two highly knowledgeable and experienced
reviewers from BBC Music and Gramophone have
no such reservations, so this is obviously a personal matter, but it really
does affect my enjoyment of the disc.
That said, this is a fine achievement in all other ways,
with a beautiful sound from the harpsichord (take that, Thomas Beecham!) which
is beautifully recorded by Naïve. There
are good notes by Alessandrini and it is very nicely presented. You may not share my reservations about the
phrasing; if so you will love this, I think, but my personal recommendation
does come with that qualification.
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