The Well Tempered Klavier

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It is an altogether more vocal and joyous presentation than it is when taken together with the fugues, as occasional track slip-ups verify.

Anyone else still having fun with these?

Now Mike that's cheating ....just remember the preludes are all odd track numbers and you should be able to avoid polluting your listening with the odd few bars of Fugue.

Actually I moght try that myself...but I am a Fugue man so I would go for the even numbers myself.

regards
geoff

I'll be going after the fugues next, but I find they take more concentration than the preludes.

It is attractive to consider each prelude-fugue as a single over-arching composition with a unifying structure, but that is not how they sound. The sound is more like contrasting pairs to my ears.

Tonight we listened to the first eight preludes of Book 2. It is the sound of the future. Haydn and Beethoven lurk!

These are the songs of a romantic heart. They incite the romantic in you.

Even if they sometimes brood ...

quote:

Originally posted by mikeeschman:
Tonight we listened to the first eight preludes of Book 2. It is the sound of the future. Haydn and Beethoven lurk!

These are the songs of a romantic heart. They incite the romantic in you.

Even if they sometimes brood ...

Sense, finally prevales ...

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
Sense, finally prevales ...

Gone for a week, and he posts a one sentence reply. Not good form!

quote:

Originally posted by mikeeschman:

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
Sense, finally prevales ...

Gone for a week, and he posts a one sentence reply. Not good form!

I should have added, IMO, to that ...

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:

quote:

Originally posted by mikeeschman:

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
Sense, finally prevales ...

Gone for a week, and he posts a one sentence reply. Not good form!

I should have added, IMO, to that ...

OK, so George doesn't fancy a talk.

That's OK, I'll be around.

Stay happy :-)

I think I can now identify any of the preludes in Book 1 on hearing it.

Two or three more weeks of daily sessions, and the rest of these should be in the memory bank.

It might be my imagination, but I think I might be beginning to recognize the sound of the keys themselves. To verify that, I will have to experiment with other works by Bach. No use trying 20th century music to test this, as it is usually all across the board. Probably the delusions of an aging mind in any case :-)

St. Matthews Passion is calling ...

It turns out it was an over active imagination.

A couple of Bach English Suites I don't know quickly proved that ...

I have simply run out of steam for the WTC currently. Will come back to it after some months absence.

Fully understood...I have not listened to it for a while now.

Here endeth the WTC. I think we have pretty much 'done it'

regards
Geoff

Just had an e-mail from Amazon.de, which informs me that Maurizio Pollini has recorded the first Book, which will be released very soon.

I shall pre-order. Don't need to listen, as I'd think that this would be the best since Richter. (Mauro is, after all, the world's greatest living pianist, although Lupu and Kovacevich may run him close).

G

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Mauro is, after all, the world's greatest living pianist, although Lupu and Kovacevich may run him close.

I think Grigory Sokolov is up there with them

Geoff, I don't know Sokolov's work.

But Pollini is a great: up there with Richter and Gilels (and he has the best ever recorded performance of Beethoven's Hammerklavier to back him up). I imagine that he'll make Ms Hewitt sound a little bit silly by comparison.

G

I just ordered the Pollini from Amazon Germany. With shipping it's about 50 euros.

Mike, I can't pre-order Pollini. I screwed up my application to the website and now amazon.de will only send me six copies, or none. Which seems rather OTT, even for Mauro! I'll wait until after their release, then try again.

Incidentally, I'm surprised that Pollini's forthcoming release has generated so little apparent interest, or discussion, here.

G

I'm very excited by the Pollini WTC. In my opinion, he is the best I've ever heard.

The best of all 5 of the late Beethoven sonatas.
Electric performances of Prokofiev and Stravinsky.
Comprehensible, hell, lucid Schoenberg.
A long list ...

I put my order confirmation through babble fish to convert to english. It says I'm getting one copy to be shipped on the 15th of October. I'll let you know what happens.

Mike, I couldn't agree with you more about Pollini's recordings of Beethoven's last five piano sonatas. Those recordings are never likely to be equalled, in my opinion. I have been lucky enough to see Pollini in concert a few times over the years, since a friend at university over forty years ago (!) introduced me to him.

I saw him playing Beethoven's last three piano sonatas about fifteen years ago at the Royal Festival Hall and I remember reading, at around the same time, that DGG had recorded him playing these 'live' in Paris (I think) for immediate release. Interestingly, those re-recordings never saw the light of day. And I'm not surprised, as I don't think that Mauro 'live' could ever better his younger self in the studio.

G

PS: I took along the booklet for my 3LP Beethoven late sonata set to that RFH concert, which Mauro autographed for me. I have the LPs and autographed brochure upstairs.

I saw him live at Constitution Hall in D.C. I believe he did Schubert, Beethoven and I can't remember who else. It made a profound impact on me, but the details are a fog today.

Tonight the Pollini WTC Book 1 arrived.

My wife and I cracked a bottle of wine, and listened through the first 12 Preludes and fugues.

Pollini is excellent - sometimes stunning.

We both were struck by the similarity to Hewitt. On many things, they are near identical.

There are times when Pollini shows Hewitt his heels, but more often, it is the other way around.

Between them, you would have 1 perfect set. I am glad to have both.

There is one other factor to consider if you must rely on recordings to hear the WTC. The Hewitt recordings are the best piano recordings we have ever heard in more than forty years of listening.

For any number of reasons, when I reach for a WTC, it will be Hewitt :-)

Mike, my Pollini WTK set is on its way from Germany - managed to order only one set, rather than six (see above!).

Can't wait, but the bugg*r is that I've got to be up in London, away from home, over the next couple of days, so won't get to hear it before the weekend, at the earliest.

I'm genuinely surprised to hear you say that you prefer the Hewitt set on balance, as I'd place Pollini at the absolute top of the peak of living pianists. I'm not sure that DGG's engineers have ever really caught his tone, although some of the earliest recordings sound better, to my ears, than his current output. Perhaps that's the playing, though.

G

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Originally posted by graham55:
I'm genuinely surprised to hear you say that you prefer the Hewitt set on balance, as I'd place Pollini at the absolute top of the peak of living pianists.

No one is more suprised than me, given Pollini's Beethoven. But Bach and Beethoven are two different kettle of fish, as far as the technical demands they put on the player.

The Pollini set goes for a distant acoustic that doesn't help things either.

The differences between Pollini and Hewitt are profound :

Pollini's rhythm is flawless, far superior to Hewitt's. He can maintain three subdivisions over four voices as long as he likes, without any drift.

Hewitt has everything voiced perfectly, and that's breath-taking.

But how I wish I could have all that, in one performer :-)

Hewitt is the better set. She spent a great deal of time preparing and performing this music. Pollini often sounds as if he is sight reading.

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Hewitt has everything voiced perfectly...

Mike, I agree very much with this statement. Hewitt is very intelligent about her approach and she has it all worked out. Like most musicians of her ilk, their choices on how to play something have intent but nothing is done without some sort of intellectual basis to back them up. Watch her DVD on how to play Bach for a very nice introduction on what is all involved and considered.

I have the Pollini on order so I am looking forward to the comparison!

I'm actually glad that Pollini can be noted for some certain strength and Hewitt another and so on. I wouldn't want to combine these attributes to come up with the hypothetical perfect interpretation. I would prefer to value and understand the individual. No one will ever have it all but I like Hewitt for being Hewitt and Pollini for being who he is.

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The Hewitt recordings are the best piano recordings we have ever heard in more than forty years of listening.

Not sure whether you are referring to the interpretation or sound quality or both or something else?

I had an interesting encounter a couple of weeks ago concerning the sound quality of the Hyperion / Fazioli. When I first heard this latest Hewitt WTC, I reported here or somewhere else how I wasn't convinced about the sound. Weeks later, my piano tuner and I happened to start talking about this as the day he came over was a day after he had just spent 3 days with Angela Hewitt preparing a Fazioli for her 2 concerts that weekend. Lots of interesting stories he told of their conversations and he has nothing but admiration for her. It wasn't the first time he'd tuned for her either. Years ago he told me stories of her start into Fazioli and how she'd really rant about Steinway etc. He is a Steinway trained technician.

I trust my tuner's opinion because he is highly regarded in the Steinway world and is among the best around here, period. He has tuned and serviced pianos for many well known pianists, including Vladimir Ashkenazy, to name one.

So I asked him the differences between Steinway and Fazioli and he told me. At the end I offered to play some of Hewitt's WTC for him. He was not impressed to say the least. In fact, he was very disappointed with that recording. The night before he had asked Angela to recommend some of her recordings to him to buy and he said, "No wonder she didn't recommend this one to him." Here is a guy who sells Steinway and has now also started selling Fazioli. He knows these piano's intimately and what you can expect out of these pianos if properly serviced. In the end we wondered if the choice of venue or Hyperion's philosophy of sound/sound engineers or something else was at fault here. I felt this all along too. Such wonderful playing that is marred by a variable recording. I mean it isn't horrible but it's just that something is not quite the way it should (or could) be.

Mike, I thought I'd relate this story to you as I thought you'd find it interesting since your wife services/tunes pianos.

Regards,
Doug