Rating: 3/5
Review:
Not a great Bach disc
It pains me to say this of such a great pianist, but I'm
afraid I don't think that Nelson Freire's Bach is all that good. It has its moments and Freire's technique is,
of course, superb, but I don't think his first foray into this repertoire is
successful overall.
Nelson Freire is rightly hugely respected for his
interpretations of 19th- and 20th-Century repertoire, but
Bach is a different thing altogether and I don't think he's really made the
transition. He doesn't overdo the Romantic
Gestures (thank heavens!) but some real essentials of Bach performance often
seem to me to be missing. Fluency and
distinctness of individual contrapuntal lines too often becomes lost,
especially in fugal passages, as does the essential pulse which beats through
Bach's music at different rates but always as an integral part of the
music. Its blurring loses something
fundamental to these pieces, and I find the whole thing rather undistinguished.
There are some quite magnificent performances of Bach on the
piano by people like Angela Hewitt,
Murray Perahia and recently (and rather to my surprise) Rudolf
Buchbinder. I would recommend any of
these before this disc; I'd recommend sticking to Freire's superb
interpretations of later repertoire and give this one a miss.
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