Jan Swafford in Slate discusses the new solo piano recording by Pierre-Laurent Aimard of Bach’s Art of the Fugue (Read Wikipedia):
“It’s as if you told a physicist that Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity was topping the best-seller list. It’s not supposed to happen. This is because the 14 fugues and four canons that make up The Art of Fugue constitute one of the most esoteric musical works ever written.”
Updated on Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 12:57 by
John Gibbons
Harold Fromm doesn’t think we see Bach as a man, a personality. “Bach is in the very chemistry of Western musical blood, like red cells, white cells, and platelets in our material plasma. But if Bach is The Father, why hasn’t he fired the popular imagination?”
The first session of my fall Bach class will feature three works whose authorship has been disputed. I personally think all three are by Bach, and it appears there is now a consensus in the case of the capriccio.
The last time I taught a Bach class there were raised eyebrows when I used recordings of the major choral works conducted by Furtwangler (Matthew Passion), Klemperer (Matthew Passion as well) and Karajan (b minor mass). There may even have been a few smirks. Why did I use these recordings? Am I so out of touch? I used them because they are better than the recordings by Harnoncourt and Gardiner.
