What are you listening to and WHY might anyone be interested? (Vol. XI)

Glenn Gould: The Art of the Fugue 1-9  1962 recording

Relatively low noise floor and in spite the Dolby NR remastering, maintaining a decent clarity  Organ is close mic’d in that very little hall ambience coming through and a bit light weight on low registers. 

Compact and tidy organ playing and light weight organ tones make this set rhythmic and even at times comical. 

On a whole, tho, this reading is too frantic for me as Gould does not let the notes breath. Certainly that it has a carnival like atmosphere in relative to Sokolov’s Funeral eulogy like tone.

Wish he re-recorded this like he did with the Goldberg Variations which shows maturity in his interpretation.

Bugge Wesseltoft: Moving 2001 recording

I used to play this CD a lot, particularly his 'Yellow is the Colour'. Incredible dynamics and immediacy on vinyl. It seems that this is a very different mix from the CD version where acoustic instruments are moved forward in relative to programmed synth and string bass is much easier to follow. I don't know what he's doing now but this is the album I come back to again and again.

Dear Kuma,

I am sure you need no help finding Bach performances that you like, but offered humbly here is my favourite, and fortunately very much still available today. Recorded in pioneering stereo in 1956, the actual quality is hugely better on CD than this youtube film, but you can get the idea of the performing style. Nothing comical about this, and nothing funereal either.

Helmut Walcha on DG.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hd35AHmw3I

I hope you enjoy this!

One of my Desert Island discs!

With best wishes from George

https://youtu.be/E-zfcB6iyto

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5cDpIJf-2o

That's good to hear. I have tickets to see them in December.

Thanks Kuma. Got it playing on Tidal, now. Must get the Vinyl.

Up next, on LP.

George,

Thank you for the recommendation.

I will, for sure, give it a proper listen.

This, along with the other albums in the Close Up series, is excellent. Better than the originals in my view. 

Here is another seminal and radical performance. Karl Munchinger on Decca in a version for orchestra. Not Stockowsky orchestral style, but Mondrian-style orchestra. Enough but no more. and it catches the music beautifully!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrrYGJ3jNeM

With best wishes from George

Yes. I'd agree with that HH. A superb set.

M

Thanks again George.

The orchestra version of the Art of the Fugue is  interesting.

I have one with Ristenpart and Chamber Orchestra of Sarr which I enjoy.

Munchinger is a familiar name but I have never picked up one of his records. 

I *might* have a Walcha vinyl somewhere in the house tho. 

Is this the one?

I saw them at Latitude a couple of years ago. Great fun, loads of energy, and they said "let's make this shit count" quite a lot.

Keith

Of the versions recorded on an organ, yes!

Though Marie Claire Alain made a wonderful organ recording of it in the earlier 1970s, not to be confused with her less successful digital recording.

Unfortunately the older recording has not resurfaced on CD, so you are stuck with second hand vinyl, which may be dubious, because it is cut loud enough to cause end of side tracking problems.

ATB from George

For Bach on the organ, this is very good.

Klyde,

I hope you have easier time finding the copy than I did!

Dear Kuma,

The Munchinger performance is on a Decca budget two CD set. Not to be missed, while we can still have access to radical and older ideas. In no way is this authentic, but it get the music in a sort of abstracted way that has nothing to do with the means. The means is merely a means to an end. And in this case the means needs no justification at all. It is great. No point scoring, but great playing that seems in effect artless, which is of course not the case. Just art concealing art, to the greater glory of the music itself.

With best wishes from George

George,

A decent modern pick-up should be able to cope with that.

The aching silence that occurs in the unfinished Contrapunctus of the Art Of Fugue is the biggest enigma in music for me.

No completion can possibly emulate what Bach might have composed. Walcha made an attempt that is not part of the 1956 recording that does end in mid air.

Munchinger follows the silence with a Choral as transcribed for orchestra, and at least allows for the emotional vacuum to be filled with a decent cadence ...

Whether this is very important is moot in reality. Like Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony,” there is a sort of completion in its very lack of a satisfactory end, but for sure that is what we are left with. In Bach’s case caused by ill-health and death, while in Schubert’s case maybe sheer expediency.

With best wishes from George

RE: Schubert's unfinished work

His unfinished Sonata ( D840 ) is even move poignant than his symphony when Richter stops at where Schubert left off...

Another 'what if' scores for me is Mozart's Requiem ( more than half of tunes are not original ) and Bruckner's 9th. Fragment of 4th movement exists but it feels it's so incomplete state in that a few recordings without the final movement make more sense. ( Klemperer, Celibidache, Skrowaczewski etc.. did a good job that the score sounds complete with a clear messaging. Makes me think ' do we really need one more movement on this score? )

Nonetheless Harnoncourt/Vienna Phil plays all the scores the composer wrote with orchestration and it is fascinating as I thought the tune was headed to somewhere even more interesting. Of course then there is an inevitable abrupt stop where Bruckner died. 

As Bach's Art of the Fugue, we'll never know.

Schubert’s Relique ...please  don’t ask me for my emotional response ...

For me Bach’s Art Of Fugue is easily the more significant music, but the Schubert issue is something else. Schubert was such a character that one cannot ignore any of his music, but one may find it incomprehensible.

That is where I am with some of it. I am really at the point of complete head shaking with Schubert .... 

ATB from George