PETER HILL
JS Bach l The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I
PETER HILL piano JS Bach l The Well-Tempered Clavier,
Book I BWV 846-869
1 Prelude I in C major [2:08] 2 Fugue I [2:00]
3 Prelude II in C minor [1:43]
Fugue II [1:43]
5 Prelude III in C sharp major [1:19] 6 Fugue III [2:34]
7 Prelude IV in C sharp minor [3:04] 8 Fugue IV [4:06] 9 Prelude V in D major [1:20]
Fugue V [1:59]
Prelude VI in D major [1:33]
Fugue VI [2:20]
Fugue X [1:24]
Prelude XI in F major [1:26]
Fugue XI [1:31]
Prelude XII in F minor [2:47]
Fugue XII [4:23]
playing time [1:00:22]
CD2
1 Prelude XIII in F sharp major [1:48]
2 Fugue XIII [2:25]
3 Prelude XIV in F sharp minor [1:19]
4 Fugue XIV [2:33]
5 Prelude XV in G major [1:15]
6 Fugue XV [2:48]
7 Prelude XVI in G minor [2:06]
8 Fugue XVI [2:55]
9 Prelude XVII in A flat major [1:26]
10 Fugue XVII [2:39]
11 Prelude XVIII in G sharp minor [1:40]
12 Fugue XVIII [3:23]
13 Prelude XIX in A major [1:15]
14 Fugue XIX [3:18]
15 Prelude XX in A minor [1:14]
16 Fugue XX [4:25]
17 Prelude XXI in B flat major [1:24]
18 Fugue XXI [1:56]
19 Prelude XXII in B flat minor [2:39]
20 Fugue XXII [3:03]
21 Prelude XXIII in B major [1:29]
22 Fugue XXIII [2:24]
23 Prelude XXIV in B minor [6:13]
24 Fugue XXIV [5:04]
Total playing time [1:00:56]
Recorded on 10–12 July & 17–18
December 2012 at the University Concert Hall, CardiffProducer/ Engineer: Paul Baxter
24-bit digital editing: Adam Binks 24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter
Design: Drew Padrutt
Booklet editor: Henry Howard
Piano: Steinway Model D Serial No. 572883 (2004)
Piano technician: Richard Kühnel
Photography © MC Photography
Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.co.uk
Peter Hill would like to thank Adrian Moore, Caroline Rae and Yo Tomita
In 1720 Bach created a manuscript notebook, the Clavierbüchlein, for his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann, then aged nine. This contains a guide to the rudiments of music theory, followed by groups of pieces of varying difficulty. Among these is a set of eleven preludes in all the major and minor keys from C to F (only E flat major is missing). Some of these might strike us as unduly challenging for a child, and it may be that Bach’s imagination had run ahead of his immediate aim. If so, the next step was to incorporate the preludes into what became the most ambitious undertaking in Bach’s career to date, a complete traversal of the major and minor keys on all twelve notes of the chromatic scale, with in each case a prelude paired with a fugue. The first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier was created between 1720 and the winter of 1722–23, with the second volume (of what became known as Bach’s ‘48’) dating from 1738 to 1742. Book I is announced by its title page in Bach’s finest calligraphy to be for ‘the profit and use of musical youth desiring instruction, as well as for the pastime of those who are already skilled in this study’. Indeed, Bach may have intended the preludes and fugues as the culmination of a wider educational project that had included the Orgelbüchlein from his time at Weimar (1708–17) and the Inventions and Sinfonias composed at Cöthen, where Bach was employed from 1717 to 1723. While much of the music for Book I will have been newly composed, much was recycled from
earlier music: the prelude in E flat and fugue in A minor, for example, are thought on stylistic grounds to be considerably older. Where earlier music was used, it might be transposed (the D sharp minor fugue, for example, is believed to have been originally in D minor) or substantially revised and enlarged, as were most of the preludes taken from the Clavierbüchlein.
Bach’s other aim, reflected in the work’s title, was to demonstrate that with a suitably ‘welltempered’ system of tuning, one that modified the natural acoustic intervals, all possible keys could be brought into play. The problem was a very real one when writing for keyboard instruments, and composers of Bach’s day (including Bach himself outside the ‘48’) rarely ventured into keys that contained more than four sharps or flats. The issue was addressed in a treatise (1691) by the leading authority on the subject, the organ-builder Andreas Werckmeister, and a number of composers took up the challenge of composing short pieces in remote keys. A direct precedent for Bach was the collection of 20 preludes and fugues, Ariadne musica (1702), by J.C.F. Fischer, although significantly Fischer still avoided the keys with the most sharps and flats. Opinion is divided on whether Bach had in mind equal temperament, with the chromatic scale consisting of twelve exactly equal semitones, or whether ‘well-tempered’ meant that while every key was tolerable to the ear some individuality of tuning was retained.
Beyond these concerns is the astonishing diversity and inventiveness of Bach’s music in The Well-Tempered Clavier . In every piece, whether prelude or fugue, Bach’s purpose is to explore to its fullest potential a central musical idea. In the fugues this is the ‘subject’, heard unaccompanied at the outset. With the preludes a typical opening manoeuvre is to take a pattern of figuration through a circuit of harmonies, before embarking on a journey of exploration (when performing Bach one is constantly reminded of Paul Klee’s dictum that the art of drawing is ‘taking a line for a walk’). The preludes are a dazzling array of styles: dance movements (E major, A flat major), improvisations (B flat major), keyboard studies, ranging from the simplest (C major) to the most brilliant (D major, D minor), slow movements in vocal or instrumental style (E flat minor, E minor), and polyphonic pieces with imitation between the voices (C sharp minor, G sharp minor), two of which (in E flat major and A major) are fugues in all but name. The fugues are equally varied. Some are clearly intended as a tour de force of contrapuntal ingenuity (A minor), while some are serious, dramatic or introspective. In others the tone may be conversational (C major, E flat major), humorous (A major) or quirkily argumentative (E minor); and there are affectionate glimpses of popular or domestic styles, the music of the tavern perhaps, or the part-songs or madrigals sung in the home.
The placing of the fugues shows the care with which Book I was designed. The two halves are balanced so that the first (from C major to F minor) has seven fugues in three voices, while the second (from F sharp major to B minor) has seven ‘à 4’. Each half has one fugue in five voices, in a vocal style that recalls sixteenthcentury polyphony (stile antico), symmetrically positioned a semitone in from the outer extremities of the work. But what is most perceptible to the listener is the grouping of keys in pairs (C and C sharp, D and E flat, etc), each pair culminating in a particularly lengthy, or otherwise impressive, minor key fugue (C sharp minor, D sharp minor, F minor, G minor, A minor and B minor).
Another aspect of the design becomes apparent with the different approaches Bach takes to establishing a relationship between prelude and fugue. Because the ‘48’ was a compilation, this is almost never a matter of shared thematic material (the exception is the B major pair). Bach’s strategy at the beginning of Book I, with the prelude and fugue in C major, is to underline the sense of key, the prelude opening with an arpeggio of C major, the fugue with a subject that uses segments from the C major scale; also significant is that during the course of the fugue entries of the subject occur on every note of the C major scale. The prelude was originally the simple point of departure in Wilhelm Friedemann’s notebook. In his revision for The Well-Tempered Clavier Bach extended
the pedal point (on a low G) before the original final cadence, transforming the piece from a child’s exercise into something much deeper. The ending, however, is unassuming, with the line restored to the upper register where it began, a delightful touch, echoed at the end of the fugue. This is densely worked, concerned with overlapping entries of its main idea (the subject), a technique known as stretto. The subject explores the interval of a fourth, whether as a scale (the first four notes) or as a zigzag, the two connected by a turn, which Bach sharpened in rhythm in a later revision to make it stand out from the smooth flow of counterpoint.
The C minor prelude was another that was considerably enlarged, here by the addition of a cadenza that starts with a scurrying presto. The fugue is playful but perfectly balanced in its design. The subject has a melodic ‘geometry’ which (as so often in Bach) implies two voices: the first three notes against the next two, and so on, with the upper line apparently resisting the downward pull of the lower. The dialogue is summarised at the end of the subject with a downward scale, which overlaps with the second entry of the subject, or ‘answer’. The subject’s motifs (including the scale) are developed in ‘episodes’. These alternate with entries of the subject, varied in tonality – the first middle entry is in A flat major, for example – and in voicing, as Bach interchanges the material between the three lines, in so-called triple counterpoint.
The C sharp major prelude begins as it did in the Clavierbüchlein as a study in exchanging ideas between the hands, with shimmering broken chords and a skipping accompaniment; in a later passage added in Bach’s revision, this is condensed into the interplay of single notes in staccato syncopations. The fugue’s subject has similar sprightly leaps, but its development initially takes in minor keys (including the exceptionally remote E sharp minor). The form is balanced by a recapitulation which comes after a brilliant central duet with ideas alternating between the hands, another echo of the prelude.
The C sharp minor prelude is a richly ornamented slow movement, one of the jewels of Book I. All the material flows from the opening bar in which two falling motifs are linked by an octave leap. The serene flow becomes increasingly intense, as a long descent in the left hand widens the gap between the voices. The great five-voice fugue is known to have been a favourite of Beethoven, and the opening foreshadows Beethoven’s fugue in the same key from the String Quartet Op. 131. Where Beethoven develops from a subject that has two distinct motifs, Bach uses his terse four-note subject as a pervasive cantus firmus, the fugue gathering momentum with the introduction of two new themes, the first a descant of quavers, the second a more decisive figure that combines with the principal subject in a climactic tour de force, a double stretto.
The C sharp minor fugue closes the first section in Bach’s design for Book I. The movements in the keys of D major and minor are relatively brief. The D major prelude is an airy moto perpetuo with light pizzicato bass. Its grand cadence rings up the curtain on a fugue in the style of a French overture, with pesante dotted rhythms. As a fugue this could hardly be less orthodox, since from the midpoint the subject as a whole drops out in favour of a dialogue between its first figure (a flourish in demisemiquavers) and a contrasting gentler idea. The D minor prelude starts apparently straightforwardly with a broken chord pattern over a solidly ‘square’ bass, then deepens and intensifies as the bass acquires a smoother contour, setting off inner motifs within the right hand’s weaving triplets. In the fugue Bach exploits the capacity of his subject to combine with itself in inversion. Like the fugue in C major the midpoint is marked by a clear cadence; this is recapitulated at the end, after which an additional bar reflects on the normal and inverted forms of the subject.
The keys of E flat comprise two of the most remarkable pairings in the ‘48’. The E flat major prelude is the most ambitious in Book I. The opening – improvisatory in style – sketches semiquaver arabesques. Then comes an equally exquisite passage of counterpoint in vocal style from which a fugal subject emerges, accompanied by a counter-theme (in the right hand) derived from the opening semiquavers,
the two worked together in a double fugue. The fugue that follows makes no attempt to compete. The tone is lightly artificial, close in spirit, perhaps, to the Mozart of Così fan tutte, a gentle breeze puffing the sails, and the subject framed as a question-and-answer.
The E flat minor prelude has the rhythm and tempo of a sarabande, the wide intervals of the melody indicating the intensity of emotion, which rises to that of an impassioned dramatic scena. The fugue, in the enharmonically equivalent key of D sharp minor, develops patiently from quiet beginnings, exploring its subject in various combinations of stretto (of which there are no fewer than ten passages), with the subject both in its original form and inverted. The closing section – introduced by a clear cadence preceded by a descending phrase of sighing suspensions – places the subject in augmentation (long note-values) against original and inverted versions, closing with what seems like an affirmative response to the doubt and darkness of the prelude.
The E major pair marks a respite. The prelude is a lilting pastorale, music for a fête champêtre by Watteau. The fugue is comic and concise, opening with a question, with the answering voice joining the argument before the subject is complete. The chattering semiquavers drift to the minor, before uniting in an exuberant conclusion. The E minor was the prelude most radically revised by Bach. Originally a study
in semiquavers for the left hand, Bach added an ornate melody, implying a much slower tempo, together with an extended coda which begins by repeating the initial chord progression with its semiquaver figuration, but in a quicker tempo and transposed to the higher subdominant key. Its companion is a rare example of a fugue in just two voices, and the only example in the ‘48’. The fugue’s proportions are exactly balanced, with the left hand in the second half taking the right hand’s material from the first, and vice versa. The arrival of the midpoint can be recognised by a bar in which the hands unite in octaves; the recapitulation of this bar at the end of the second half signals an exasperated coda with an abruptly snatched final chord.
The F major prelude is a lilting two-part invention, dusted with luminous trills. The fugue opens simply, rather in the manner of a madrigal, but alters course and colour with two passages of stretto (in the minor keys of D and G), before rising scales derived from the subject enable the music to skip free. The F minor pair makes an impressive conclusion to the first half of Book I. The texture of the prelude uses the style brisé technique of lute or harpsichord music, with selected notes of the melody sustained to enrich the harmony, to eerily beautiful effect. The subject of the fugue uses nine of the possible twelve notes of the chromatic scale, and the fugal development is the richest of any fugue so far. The design is
shaped round a series of majestic entries of the subject, in which its three countersubjects are deployed in quadruple counterpoint. The episodes derive from the first of these countersubjects (heard in the left hand in bar 4) and provide a necessary lightening of the sonority. Very typically of Bach, the first episode occurs before the end of the opening exposition, between the entries of the third and fourth voices.
The F sharp major pair opens the second half with the same quiet simplicity with which the work began. The prelude is a duet, the left hand moving smoothly, the right hand in syncopations whose widening skips (in bars 2–3, for example) suggest an extra voice. The fugue similarly contrasts its lyrical subject with a more animated second theme featuring repeated notes. The F sharp minor prelude is a two-part invention, both lively and slightly melancholy. The fugue’s subject has an aspiring quality, to which the countersubject adds pairs of quaver ‘sighs’, filling in the slow swing of the pulse (two beats per bar, subdivided into groups of three). The G major prelude is an example of the sophistication Bach brings to apparently simpler music, a flow of melodic invention derived from the opening arpeggios. The fugue has the virtuosity of a concerto, with the appearance of the subject, whether in its original form or inverted, connected by virtuoso writing, including a striking passage of converging and diverging scales. The G minor
prelude is a study in refinement of sonority, with each musical sentence introduced by a lengthy trill. The second of these initiates the answering phrase, the third the move to the major key (with the trill transferred to the left hand), the fourth marking a modulation to the subdominant C minor, with the bass line dipping to the lowest note in Bach’s compass for the ‘48’, the C below the bass stave. The fugue, though comparatively brief, is one of the most profound in Book I. The subject is in two halves, separated by a rest, and is mirrored by the countersubject, which is formed by inverting each half of the subject in turn (starting with the second half), resulting in an exceptionally close integration of the voices in counterpoint.
The exchanges at the start of the A flat major prelude suggest a witty pas de deux in brisk minuet tempo. Again the form is perfectly poised, with the partners (represented by the player’s hands) swapping roles in the second half. The fugue subject’s smoothly undulating quavers lend themselves to development in sequences, which become more extended and more purposeful as they move to their resounding conclusion. The G sharp minor prelude, a graceful siciliano, is another whose tuneful simplicity masks the intricacy of its counterpoint. The subject of the fugue ends with a straightforward cadence formula, developed at first simply, with the pattern in the bass accompanied by lightly detached
chords. The fugue’s complexity arises from the interaction of this simplicity with the expressive counterpoints that surround each appearance of the subject.
The A major prelude is a three-part invention whose ideas are shared between the voices in triple counterpoint. The later stages introduce chiming descending scales, which combine in contrary motion before unravelling into the cadence. The fugue starts with what sounds like a mistake, a single note followed by a pause, introducing an elegant conversation in which none of the three participants have any intention of stopping to listen, although the fact that they are discoursing on the same subject (so to speak) means that numerous correspondences and similarities flicker across the texture. The middle section is marked by a counterpoint in semiquavers. The brief A minor prelude acts as a question mark before a fugue that is one of the great set pieces of the ‘48’. As with the D sharp minor (and the B flat minor in Book II), the subject is put through its paces in stretto, both in its original and inverted forms. In the closing stages the two versions are set in opposition, before being reconciled in the final bars over a resounding pedal point, reinforced on this recording by the A an octave below.
The final phase of Book I opens with a lighter interlude; neither piece in the B flat major pair takes itself too seriously. The prelude starts with flickering demisemiquavers, interrupted by
a grandiose cadenza, which abruptly evaporates in the final bar. The fugue’s subject contrasts its graceful opening motif with an afterthought of seemingly inconsequential semiquavers. The point of the fugue is to bring the two into dialogue, especially in the minor-key episode in the second half. The B flat minor pair marks the emotional crux of the work. The prelude, with its harmonies building over the inexorable repetitions of the bass B flat, has been likened to the opening chorus of the St Matthew Passion. The massing of harmonies towards the end creates the effect of a crescendo on the harpsichord or clavichord. The fugue is the second of Book I’s five-voice fugues in stile antico, and as with its companion, the C sharp minor, the subject is concise, though here with two distinct elements: the falling fourth (answered, according to fugal convention, by a falling fifth) and a smooth line of crotchets. At the climax of the fugue all five voices combine in a stretto that is one of the great inspirations in the ‘48’. The key of B flat minor is almost unknown in Bach outside The Well-Tempered Clavier, the exception being the setting of the words of the crucified Christ (‘My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me?’) from the St Matthew Passion. Book I, of course, predates the St Matthew Passion by five years, but it may be that Bach already associated this remote key with a dark and despairing intensity.
If so, the prelude that follows, in B major, is the dawning of a new day, in delicately glowing
colours. The coda is beautifully worked, with the motif and its mirror image resolved in the closing bars. The fugue is more robust, with a change of colour at the midpoint (marked by a cadence) when the subject is heard in inversion. One sign that the B minor prelude may have been among the last pieces to be composed is that it is the only true sonata movement in Book I (a binary form with both halves repeated), whereas there are ten such movements in Book II. With the repeats observed this becomes the longest prelude in Book I, and one of the most impressive. The texture is a trio, with the upper voices intertwining against the even tread of quavers in the bass. The chromaticism of the final bars anticipates the fugue subject, which incorporates all twelve notes of the chromatic scale, and which embodies two melodic archetypes, the arpeggio (heard in the three descending notes at the beginning and towards the end of the subject) and the pairs of notes in ‘sighs’. The countersubject adds to the richness of detail, with the sighing quavers accompanied by sostenuto crotchets, and a final angular gesture in semiquavers that becomes an important linking motif. After the end of the exposition an episode in a lighter texture (using three of the four voices) acts as a bridge to the central development, in which the subject in shortened form is passed through the voices before being heard in full in the major. A sense of symmetry is given by the reprise of the transparent-sounding episode before the final climactic entries of the subject.
The Well-Tempered Clavier was never printed in Bach’s lifetime, but in the half century after his death (in 1750) manuscript copies circulated widely. In 1782 a copy reached Mozart, who had been introduced to Bach’s music by the influential connoisseur Gottfried van Swieten: ‘I go to Baron van Swieten’s every Sunday at midday,’ Mozart wrote to his father, ‘where nothing is played but Handel and Bach. I am now making a collection of the fugues of Bach.’ Beethoven could reputedly play the entire ‘48’ from memory by the age of eleven (in 1781), and it was Beethoven who more than anyone began to realise the implications of Bach’s exploration in the ‘48’ of the complete spectrum of tonality; indeed, the huge expansion of symphonic forms in the nineteenth century can be traced to the influence of The Well-Tempered Clavier.
In 1801 the ‘48’ was published for the first time, with three editions in the same year giving impetus to the Bach Revival (as it is known). The Well-Tempered Clavier was studied by Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt and Brahms, among others, and was universally admired. By the middle of the century the work had acquired a quasi-biblical status: Schumann urged musicians to make it their ‘daily bread’, while the conductor Hans von Bülow set the ‘48’ alongside Beethoven’s piano sonatas as music’s Old and New Testaments. Bach was an object of veneration, and Bernard Shaw, writing in the 1890s, reported that at the London
premiere of Falstaff the audience, recognising Verdi’s comic finale as a fugue, listened to it with ‘deep reverence’ as if it were by Bach.
The twentieth-century revolution in musical style and language brought no lessening in Bach’s influence, on composers as diverse as Bartók (who published an edition of the ‘48’), Schoenberg and Stravinsky, while the Ludus Tonalis by Hindemith and Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues emulated The Well-Tempered Clavier in a modern idiom. A leading figure in the reappraisal of Bach was Donald Tovey, whose commentaries on The Well-Tempered Clavier (dating from the 1920s) are unsurpassed. Tovey was ahead of his time in recommending pianists to study the harpsichord and clavichord, and in recognising the significance of pupils’ copies in establishing Bach’s final intentions. The nineteenth century had seen a plethora of performing editions, of which the best known (and one of the most corrupt) was that by Carl Czerny, which claimed to reproduce Beethoven’s interpretation. The pioneering editions by Franz Kroll (1862 and 1866) took as their primary source for Book I Bach’s fair copy of 1722–23. Recent scholarship has recognised the importance in Book I of the revisions attributable to Bach in later copies, particularly that of Bach’s second wife Anna Magdalena, and of his pupils J.C. Altnickol and J.P. Kirnberger.
The harpsichord and clavichord perhaps represent the two faces of The WellTempered Clavier, its virtuosity and the sense of private music-making, of performance not for the concert hall but one-to-one. The piano is immensely more powerful than either instrument, of course, but at one end of its spectrum is capable of matching the quietness and stillness generated by the clavichord. The clavichord is of particular interest to pianists because of the way it can shape music through minute gradations of dynamic. The lesson for pianists is to articulate Bach’s counterpoint not by bringing out the principal theme but by colouring each line with subtleties of touch and dynamic. The ideal is that a four-voice fugue should sound as though played by four individuals, with a balance that allows as many as possible of the music’s multiple meanings to speak.
The Well-Tempered Clavier shows no sign of losing its place as the single most influential work in western music. But it continues, as Bach would surely have wished, to fulfil its modest aims to inform and delight, just as it did in the composer’s own day, as recalled by one of his students, Heinrich Nicolaus Gerber, in a memoir by Gerber’s son:
At the first lesson [Bach] set the Inventions before him. When he had studied these through to Bach’s satisfaction, there followed a series of suites, then The Well-Tempered Clavier. This latter work Bach played altogether three times through to him with his unmatchable art, and my father counted these among his happiest hours, when Bach, under the pretext of not feeling in the mood to teach, sat himself at one of his fine instruments and thus turned these hours into minutes.
© 2013 Peter Hill
Peter Hill
One of the leading British pianists of his generation, Peter Hill is known for his performances and recordings of twentiethcentury and contemporary music as well as of the classical repertoire. His complete cycles of Messiaen and of Berg, Schoenberg and Webern have received superlative acclaim. The Messiaen was described as ‘one of the most impressive solo recording projects of recent years’ (New York Times), and won Messiaen’s endorsement: ‘Beautiful technique, a true poet: I am a passionate admirer of Peter Hill’s playing.’ Both sets feature in the book 1001 Classical Recordings You Must Hear Before You
Die. Other CDs include Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen (with Benjamin Frith) and two CDs of
Stravinsky, with the composer’s arrangements of The Rite of Spring and Three Movements from Petrushka. His books include Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring (Cambridge) and three on Messiaen, among them a ground-breaking biography (Messiaen, Yale) which was awarded the Dumesnil Prize by the Académie des BeauxArts in Paris. As well as recitals Peter Hill gives lectures and masterclasses around the world. He holds an honorary professorship at Sheffield University and is a Fellow of the Royal Northern College of Music.
Peter’s recording of The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II was released in 2012 and is available on Delphian (DCD34101).
J.S. Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II
Peter Hill piano
DCD34101 (2 CDs)
A recognised authority in twentieth-century and contemporary music, Peter Hill turns for the first time on disc to another of his lifelong preoccupations: the music of J.S. Bach. On this new recording, Hill brings his customary scholarly acumen and crystalline musical intelligence to bear on Book Two of the ‘48’ –music of ‘unsurpassed inventiveness’.
‘exceptional readings, scholarly yet living … For all the compositional rigour, Hill makes these preludes and fugues sing and dance, and also brings out their unshakeable foundations of faith’
– HiFi Critic, March 2012
Wilde plays Brahms
David Wilde piano
DCD34040
David Wilde’s power and individuality make a separation between composer and performer, between creator and re-creator unrealistic. He sees the simple grace and lyricism favoured by many pianists as an evasion of a deeper poetic truth, and if he gives us all of Brahms’ exulting strength in the fugue from the ‘Handel’ Variations, he is no less responsive to darker nights of the soul in Op. 117.
Always there is an open invitation to reappraise Brahms’ genius, not by a radical reinterpretation (the determinedly ‘different’ way of, say, Gould or Pogorelich), but by a probing and enquiring look beneath the music’s surface life. David Wilde may be true to the composer, but he is a pianist to make you think again.
‘wholeheartedly committed, authoritative and at times dazzlingly virtuosic’
– Gramophone
‘one of the most intense and involving performances that I’ve heard’
– International Record Review
Hafliði Hallgrímsson
Simon Smith piano
DCD34051
Best known for a series of works for solo instruments and orchestra – including a highly successful concerto for his own instrument, the cello – Hafliði Hallgrímsson is also a master of the epigrammatic miniature. The piano music on this disc spans his career from 1963 to 2008, and the brilliant young pianist Simon Smith is a vital advocate of its varied colours, textures and resonances.
‘toughness, range and expressive power’
– The Guardian on Hafliði Hallgrímsson
‘An outstanding player with a huge expressive range’
– International Record Review on Simon Smith
Rory Boyle: Solo Piano Music
James Willshire piano, Bartholdy Trio
DCD34098
Released in celebration of 2010 British Composer Award winner Rory Boyle’s sixtieth birthday, this debut recording by young virtuoso pianist James Willshire explores the full gamut of Boyle’s compositional personality – from the cragginess of his finely wrought Sonata to the intensely human lyricism of Tatty’s Dancing (itself a sixtieth birthday present for Boyle’s wife).
‘While Boyle’s Scottish roots are never far away, his music has a strong, mainstream European, Stravinsky-based rigour, with its own brand of virile, challenging, but always comprehensible counterpoint, dissonance which is hard-fought yet never gratuitous, an unsentimental lyricism and unerring sense of architecture’
– Nicholas Cleobury