Search - Sviatoslav Richter :: Bach: Well-Tempered Clavier

Bach the old fashioned way

drollere | Sebastopol, CA United States | 07/18/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"i may be wrong, but i blame glenn gould with mucking up the bach playing tradition with ego and stunts ... the humming and singing along, really ... and with few exceptions (schiff for one) it seems the bach playing ever since has tried to be "vivid" -- showy, or blindingly fast, or dynamically contrasty, heck there are so many notes! but richter comes at these pieces in the russian tradition, which is to say the middle european kapelmeister tradition. to my jaded modern ears it's a delightful revelation. though some preludes are played quite fast, richter's tempos seem slightly on the slow side (by modern standards). but he is still able to link the voices together in continuous song across all registers. there is a remarkable quality of meditation and intense participation in these performances. the fugues are given an individual character, and unfold without mechanical repetition: the recurring themes are inflected differently as they reappear in different voices. the prelude textures are always clean and fluent. many of the interpretations seemed to me completely fresh. the famous C prelude from book 1, for example, can sometimes sound like a merry sewing machine or a happy milkmaid's guitar, but richter makes it seem to float to our ears from far away, soft and weightless -- an unexpectedly poignant effect. the pieces were recorded in 1970-73 on a boesendorfer piano, which sounds somewhat tubby in the acoustics of the room, but richter gets an excellent aural range through variations in touch and very sparing use of pedal. the acoustics never detract from the presence of the music or richter's remarkable playing. strongly recommended."

Perfection at the piano

frank lindemann | 02/12/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This has been my favorite recording of the WTC (and one of my favorite recordings of anything) for years. While there have been many very fine recordings of the WTC, in my opinion, none comes close to the poetry expressed by Richter in this set. I think the crucial difference with Richter is that he never just plays the notes, he is always looking for, and finding, the beauty of the music. There is literally something special in every moment of his playing.
If you are looking for a recording that will repay the deepest listening and the deepest concentration on your part, look no further, this is it."

Red-Blooded Bach by a Master

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 10/13/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"A very generous friend gave me this set several years ago and I will be forever in her debt. I had never considered buying Sviatoslav Richter playing Bach. For me he simply didn't seem to come out of the right tradition to play the Master of Leipzig. But I was mistaken, completely mistaken. This set of the WTC has become one of my most treasured possessions. For months it was in my car - a perfect way to listen to the Preludes and Fugues, a few at a time while driving short distances around town - and by now these performances are burned into my aural memory, as if they had always been there. There is such a feeling of inevitability about Richter's playing that I now cannot imagine them played any other way. Well, that's not entirely true, but close. Unlike Huibert Jonkers, whose review was posted here some months ago, I was a Glenn Gould groupie who thought his way with Bach was the best way. And though I still admire Gould, I must say that Richter has converted me. It's hard to put one's finger on what it is about Richter's playing except that it is so straightforward and full of good ol' artery-clogging cholesterol and yet so nuanced and highlighted, that it is impossible to resist. It's Romantic, I guess, and that's totally out of fashion these days. But I don't care about that. In fact, as an old pianist who has played the WTC at the keyboard for nigh on sixty years, I continue to have a hard time listening to WTC on the harpsichord. I suspect I'm not alone in that. We've been swept along in recent years by the 'historically-informed performance' folks and yet there are some of us who are not entirely convinced that the old-fashioned way with Bach isn't the best. Richter certainly fits in the 'old-fashioned' camp and that's fine with me.



Others have written here about individual details of these performances and I have little to add there. I am, like others, struck by Richter's wide dynamics and sometimes extreme tempi. For instance, the second prelude in WTC I goes faster than I've ever heard it and it is all the more exciting as a result. The overall shape of the performances, though, reveal a penetrating intellect and flawless technique put at the service of the music, granted Richter's own conception of the music, but who's to say that's not what Bach would have wanted?



I urgently recommend this box, especially since it is so attractively priced.



Scott Morrison"