JS Bach's 48, played by Helmut Walcha.

Dear Friends,

As promised six months or more ago! My thoughts on Walcha's recording, published in 1961.

The forty eight preludes and fugues in all the keys, twice, is such a huge and daunting work that to truly get to know them is a big task in itself. Not as daunting as the Art Of Fugue in my view, but surely Fischer had it right when he said that The Well Tempered Klavier, "is the Old Testamant, and Beethoven's Piano Sonatas the New!"

Half the problem is that Bach wrote such wonderful Fugues, and yet the form itself is not always easily accessible to the fairly casual listener not versed in counter-point. Some of Bach's Fugues at first aquaintance can be somewhat impenetrable, until you get used to the idea of thematic combination, sometimes with several different subjects and sometimes with only one, treated to a succession of devices - augmentation (lengthening of all the note values proportionally), diminution (the opposite), mirror (playing the them upside down, roughly speaking!), elaboration, developement... Indeed after a while anyone can get quite good at spotting Bach having a wry smile, because he knows the listener would not have possibly dreamed what has just been written was possible! Number games were also very important to Bach and a study of this music on paper will soon reveal alsorts of numerical relationships, within pieces, and even between them, as well as allowing even more successful listen later. This all tends to add to the unapproachable mystique of Bach, the dusty mathematician, wrting a sort of exclusive and incomprehansible music, only for conoiseurs. I beleive this to absolute rot, and I have used some of these Preludes and Fugues to get people started on Classical Music, with an absolute look of shock on people's faces when all they thought they would get might be The Air from the Third Suite for Orchestra, or Wachet auf..., the advert for Lloyds when it was a Thoroughbred Among Banks! What always gets them is how Bach manages to capture the emotional and spiritual message clearly. When I explain the framework, they just wonder how that would not cripple the idea, but to Bach it merely adds spice to the task - a spur to even greater hieghts, if you like.

I am going to divide thus review into four parts (over four weeks, I hope), as it is beyond reason to expect to still be lucid trying to describe such a performance as this all in one go. Walch's EMI recording is not the first I have known. I learned a good deal about the music from Edwin Fischer's EMI set played on the piano and recorded between 1933 and 1935 the first completed recording, and still rightly available. It seems to me that the first records we hear often remain favourites. Twelve months after I found the Walcha set I have given the Fischer performance to a friend, explaining that I had found something even finer, and which had made me appreciate things in the music Fischer does not even address, not least because the piano is indisputably not what it was composed to be played on, and that the dynamics are usually all wrong as a result. Otherwise I have a few isolated example, but all on the piano.

The First Prelude, which is famous, not least because Gounod notoriously set the Ave Maria over in in a melody of his own invention which fits to Bach's harmonic ground plan, begins in a seemingly relaxed flow of gently detatched phrases, but straight away the ear should pick out the fact that the bass notes are played full length as Bach wrote, and not half length as the print has it! Indeed, the way that the bass should be played in various cases would (and been!) enough to write whole books on. The effect, however is on of a serene flow preparing us, perhaps for the rather more trenchant anf musically angular Fugue. Walcha again sees no need to rush and finds and easy gait that hardly deviates from the initial tempo. The effect is of two related pieces, even though all that binds them is tonality.

C Minor finds old JSB in sterner mode, but again the Prelude is smooth as to rhythm, at least till the Coda. Walcha manages the apparently impossible on the harpsichord. He brings out the crucial line thoughout, and it sings gloriously as any great Bach performance will, but within a detache style that actually shortens the sounded duration of the highlighted notes, though not their rhythmic value of course. The pulse is steady. The Fugue now sees Bach set a very plain theme At first in a bare octave, but introducing the other voices rather soon, which both makes the sound-world quite dense, though always clear on the harpsichord, which in a very brief span covers a lot of ground. Not a beginers fugue I'd say.

C sharp Major finds exhilaration in a rather short Prelude, which is persued by a wonderfully (and seemingly impossibly!) tuneful Fugue, which is full of light and joy and energy, and whaich again Walcha plays with a steady pulse though his tempo is faster matching the musical introduction of the Prelude.

C sharp Minor is anything but tragic in the Prelude. Not yet heroic (as some of the Preludes are later) it treads that happy paths of reaching an unclouded end. But the Fugue sets off in dark tones right at the bottom of the keyboard and hear we find Bach's seriousness of purpose matched by Walcha. Nothing is played with, and the result is apowerful emotional rendition completely devoid anything but a modest and great response to the text. The tempo is so apt, that it would be hard to say if it is slow or fast though the pulse is something just over 65.

D Major starts rather like sumeone very good strumming almost thoughtlessly a a line in the right hand over a pacing bass-line in a fashion I always think is comical. It is most like a sort of improvisation. Walcha does not miss the chance to change our view just before the end of this very short opener. Then we come to the meat course. The Fugue is anything but simple, and bears a good deal of study to work out where the themes are derived from. (Are they new material or related? etc!). Walcha is a master of the fugue for he is just flexible enough for the flow to be totaly natural, though never indulgent to the point where any nuance comes to the surface (in his playing that is) and you notice the music not the player. By now we realise that he has the measure of this music, and that Fugues that cab be tough and inflexible are breathing a life all their own, rather than being turned into a vehical for the performer.

D Minor has a rolling over idea in the right hand and the true thematic ideas which are not so even as the top line given in the middle of the keyboard. The very end of it contains a very odd progression, which sounds not quite tonal (and very modern to my ear at least) even this long after the composition. Walcha fully brings this out with some gentle slowing in the final bars. The Fugue, though quite fast has a tragic depth to it, but seems to me rather a clear structure. No tricks here!

E Flat Major starts in a grand mode and actually sounds a little Handelian, but soon enough returns to Bach and get ever more notes to play in each bar. It must be rather hard, and fortunately I played the bass, so I can listen and smile. Then the Fugue all is clearness and light. A ggod fuge to learn from a record so clear is its structure and combinations. New Variants pop up and feed through, but nothing but joy on a surface level. A gem!

Now a favourite of mine: The E flat Minor. To hear this on a harpsichord should be enough to convince anyone capable of sympathy with the tragically noble (rather than simply wanting the tragic element to dominate the noble) that the music is transformed on the piano. The great chords are heavy and dense, which means loud on the harpsichord. Here we get a whiff of defiance, where the tendency of a cultivated musician on the piano is soften the impact, and with it the noble defiance in the face pain. The Fugue folloes naturally as a sort or contemplation (not painfully slow) with a measured but steady tread. Its start is as cool as the crisp autumn brease, and moves to an ever more powerful determination that noble and humane elements will eventually gain a hold in this case. Truly this is a remarkable realisation of music that transcends its means and its place.

E Major from Bach is not the key of love duets, we find from from Handel, but here we find joy and lightness, even a delicate stand. Bach employs the higher regeons on the harpsichord, which very different from the piano, of course. The FuGue moves off with equal lightness, also at the top of the intrument, but it is a piece which requires a very clear view on articulation. it make no sense in a steady legato, and yet would soon become rather arch if it were all played stacato. There is a required lift which Walcha acheievs most naturally.

E Minor is a key which often finds Bach rather unlike his ususal self, if any such thing really excisted in a musical sense! But certainly for the first time we get a Prelude in two distinct sections. Walcha, for one of only three times in the whole reading uses the lute stop in the bass of the first half, to quite beautiful affect. The Fugue is mad, and an absolute must for anyone who thinks Bach lacks excitement, though I doubt if I'd quite call it humourous!

F Major is altogether less strained. The Prelude is flowing and very short and run almost without a break straight into the Fugue. I love this one, but perhaps it is less immediately attractive to the beginer than the E Minor. Personally I find it the perfect complement.

F Minor finds something rather happy to say, and indeed it is true that minor did not always means sad, as it were, to the old composers, but rather something that can morph from happy to sad very fast, and back again! The Fugue really has a very odd theme, which on its own sounds very angular. It grows into something of extreme beauty and resonance. Though Bach never fails to address sadness, like Haydn, he is always life-enhancing in his treatment of it. Never trite, but certainly not lacking emotional courage. This Fugue finds Walcha as firm and clear-sighted as anywhere, but no doubt he shared Bach's view of a greater good. A good stopping point for now. [Perhaps we could doubt that it will always triumph in this world today, but this kind of music and this kind of performance is enough to boost the morale, at least till the next news buletin].

I have not mentioned the recording or the instrument. There is no need to say other than that the instrument is clear, well regulated, and has a very fine tone, and the recording first rate.

Fredrik