The Art of Fugue

[DavidW]

That reply does a disservice to Spotify.  Yes their stream is lossily compressed, but it is not mp3 and the quality is better than the best that mp3 can offer.  These old ears of mine are admittedly too far gone to be any kind of arbiter, but I can't hear any difference at all between Spotify (premium) and a hi-rez 96/24 flac download of the same recording.

I agree with you, the sq is fine on Spotify.  I didn't say that Spotify had bad sound.  But at the same time I don't have to bend over backwards to support or defend a large company that has a close to monopolistic hold on the market either.  That is just silly.

[Bachtoven]

@Dry Brett Kavanaugh do you do streaming? If so, Jozesf Eotvos' Art of Fugue is available on Qobuz and presumably some other streaming platforms.

[milk]

I feel like it's been a very long time since people talked about their favorite piano versions. To me, harpsichord greats are aplenty. Have a appraises changed over the last few years? What's on offering these days? Or what's still standing the test of time? AOF never solidifies for me on piano. I still don't know what I love on this instrument.

[Bachtoven]

I feel like it's been a very long time since people talked about their favorite piano versions. To me, harpsichord greats are aplenty. Have a appraises changed over the last few years? What's on offering these days? Or what's still standing the test of time? AOF never solidifies for me on piano. I still don't know what I love on this instrument.

I like Daniil Trifonov's recent recording. It won't please the HIP crowd since he tends to romanticize it a bit. He does a great job of completing the final fugue.

[prémont]

I feel like it's been a very long time since people talked about their favorite piano versions.

My interest in piano versions of the Art of Fugue is relatively small. Despite this I own 35+ piano versions. My preference is towards informed and not too interventionist performers. Some who don't fall victim to the romantic potential of the piano. So some of my favorites are (in casual order):

Hans Petermandl
Walter Riemer
Ron Lepinat
Geoffrey Douglas Madge
Ivo Janssen
Risto Lauriala
Celimene Daudet
Ann-Helena Schlüter

[Mandryka]

I feel like it's been a very long time since people talked about their favorite piano versions. To me, harpsichord greats are aplenty. Have a appraises changed over the last few years? What's on offering these days? Or what's still standing the test of time? AOF never solidifies for me on piano. I still don't know what I love on this instrument.

I've got a ticket to hear Filippo Gorini play it at the end of July. 

[Bachtoven]

I've got a ticket to hear Filippo Gorini play it at the end of July. 

I have tickets to hear him play it next January. His recording is excellent.

[milk]

My interest in piano versions of the Art of Fugue is relatively small. Despite this I own 35+ piano versions. My preference is towards informed and not too interventionist performers. Some who don't fall victim to the romantic potential of the piano. So some of my favorites are (in casual order):

Hans Petermandl
Walter Riemer
Ron Lepinat
Geoffrey Douglas Madge
Ivo Janssen
Risto Lauriala
Celimene Daudet
Ann-Helena Schlüter

Some of these I didn't know, like Madge. He's good. I tried Koroliov. Too much dynamics. That'll drive me crazy: start soft, get loud. Madge, on the other hand, is safe hands. He persuades me.

[Mandryka]

It's a tall order for piano players. They're brought up on things like Chopin and Beethoven, and suddenly they're asked to make music out of 20-ish fugues and canons. WTC has at least got preludes! Pianists are not made for the task. 

[prémont]

I tried Koroliov. Too much dynamics. That'll drive me crazy: start soft, get loud.

Precisely. Some of the reason why I culled Koroliov's AoF.

[milk]

Precisely. Some of the reason why I culled Koroliov's AoF.

I have to start every post with, "I'm just some know-nothing dummy but..."
I wonder what these artists would produce if you gave them that one rule: you can do anything EXCEPT vary the dynamics more than a very little bit. Do piano instructors ever do it just as an exercise?

[San Antone]

I have to start every post with, "I'm just some know-nothing dummy but..."
I wonder what these artists would produce if you gave them that one rule: you can do anything EXCEPT vary the dynamics more than a very little bit. Do piano instructors ever do it just as an exercise?

A pianist uses dynamics as an integral aspect of playing  the piano, in fact that is such an important and definitive aspect, it is where it got its name: pianoforte.

However, I believe that András Schiff has spoken about when he plays Bach on the piano he doesn't use the sustain pedal.  He may also minimize the use of dynamics.

[Mandryka]

There's nothing wrong with piano dynamics in harpsichord music like AoF. Even on a harpsichord you can couple manuals. The problem is to decide how to use it. How much dynamic variation, and what function it serves.

[prémont]

There's nothing wrong with piano dynamics in harpsichord music like AoF. Even on a harpsichord you can couple manuals. The problem is to decide how to use it. How much dynamic variation, and what function it serves.

Of course the different contrapuncti of the AoF can be played at different dynamic levels, but there are very few places within a given counterpoint where harpsichord-like terrace-dynamics can be used in a "natural" way, maybe only in cpt. V, VIII and XI and in the unfinished fugue. I tend to think that pianists should think in clavichord terms and not in harpsichord terms when they play Bach on piano. That means a generally low dynamic level and rather discrete degrees of dynamic variation just like Wolfgang Rübsam and Peter Hill.

[Mandryka]

Of course the different contrapuncti of the AoF can be played at different dynamic levels, but there are very few places within a given counterpoint where harpsichord-like terrace-dynamics can be used in a "natural" way, maybe only in cpt. V, VIII and XI and in the unfinished fugue. I tend to think that pianists should think in clavichord terms and not in harpsichord terms when they play Bach on piano. That means a generally low dynamic level and rather discrete degrees of dynamic variation just like Wolfgang Rübsam and Peter Hill.

I'm not sure whether you'll agree with this, I'm curious about what you think. But I believe that when  brief hesitations before notes are expertly applied, they can draw the listener's attention to those notes in such a way that the illusion of momentary a volume increase, for just one note or a short phrase, is very powerful. I think Leonhardt could do this.  I found a passage once a long time ago to support my contention -- I'll try to find it again later, Rameau I think.

[Mandryka]

I was listening just now to Egarr play the Sarabnde from BWV 808 -- the third English Suite. And I thought to myself that the way he uses the harpsichord's decay is so effective that if I were a piano player trying to make sense of this, I would certainly apply a bit of sustain pedal.

[prémont]

I'm not sure whether you'll agree with this, I'm curious about what you think. But I believe that when  brief hesitations before notes are expertly applied, they can draw the listener's attention to those notes in such a way that the illusion of momentary a volume increase, for just one note or a short phrase, is very powerful. I think Leonhardt could do this.  I found a passage once a long time ago to support my contention -- I'll try to find it again later, Rameau I think.

I agree completely with this. This is one of many agogic measures harpsichordists may use. By being delayed very shortly a note may seemingly achieve an accent. Leonhardt was probably the first to use this measure and Rübsam springs to mind and today it feels natural to use it.

[prémont]

I was listening just now to Egarr play the Sarabnde from BWV 808 -- the third English Suite. And I thought to myself that the way he uses the harpsichord's decay is so effective that if I were a piano player trying to make sense of this, I would certainly apply a bit of sustain pedal.

The problem with the use of the sustain pedal is that it's unselective and the result may well become general blurring. If one wants to delay the decay of a single note (or a single line) it's best done with the fingers just as one has got to do it on a harpsichord, but for chords it may result in a better effekt.

[Atriod]

My interest in piano versions of the Art of Fugue is relatively small. Despite this I own 35+ piano versions. My preference is towards informed and not too interventionist performers. Some who don't fall victim to the romantic potential of the piano. So some of my favorites are (in casual order):

Hans Petermandl
Walter Riemer
Ron Lepinat
Geoffrey Douglas Madge
Ivo Janssen
Risto Lauriala
Celimene Daudet
Ann-Helena Schlüter

Very good list, I really like Hans Petermandl and Walter Riemer, on another board I started a favorite fortepiano performances thread and Riemer AoF was right at the top. I was surprised to see Celimene Daudet, a pianist I stumbled upon by chance and immediately ordered the CD after a single play. I've never heard her mentioned anywhere. 

Charles Rosen remains my favorite. He is about as close to what I can imagine of Leonhardt's DHM recording on piano, if forced to get rid of all others these are the two I'd keep.

[milk]

Ann-Helena Schlüter is very good in AOF and I'm going to listen to her WTC1. I'd like to know more about her. I hope she'll go on to WTC2. I'm curious to know what leads a pianist like her to play this way. It seems like a lonely path? I wonder how it's received and what mainstream pianists think when they hear it. I'm very curious about this. The critics who review Lang-lang and Olafsson, do they think she doesn't know how to play? I don't know anything about this but listening to mainstream music makes me think they might not get it at all. But maybe they do. Maybe they'd say it's dry and academic. Anyway, I like this particular recording very much.
It's probably mainly about how dynamics detracts from the music, sounds unnatural and annoying to my ears, and mars the listening, just makes it impossible for me to sit through. But I also feel these days that a lack of limits in everything tends to detract from the end result. I was showing my kids the British TV show The Thunderbirds and thinking about this. Like, you'd have to be crazy to make a show like that and it could only be made at that time and place. Classical music still imposes these limits on people who still take them seriously while also allowing that they don't have to. Which is fine. But the limits of the harpsichord or the musical score itself, as far as what it appears to intend, still produces something interesting.
See? I went from Bach to The Thunderbirds and back to Bach!