Vladimir Ashkenazy’s increasingly rare solo-piano forays into the recording studio have yielded an unexpected windfall in the form of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. The pianist’s straightforward, intelligent, and vibrantly clear interpretations are a joy to hear, even when considering the virtues of modern-day Bach pianists like Koroliov (Tacet), Schiff (Decca), and Hewitt (Hyperion), or like-minded non-specialists such as David Korevaar (MSR). Indeed, Ashkenazy serves as an antidote to Daniel Barenboim’s recent pretentious, lily-gilding traversals. He eschews Glenn Gould’s idiosyncrasies of tempo and phrasing, and proves more stylish than older, erstwhile Russian colleagues like Nikolayeva and Richter.
If Ashkenazy is less concerned than Schiff over ornamental niceties and terraced dynamics, he avoids the latter’s occasional precious moments (compare both in Book 1’s G minor Prelude, for instance). Slower, more contemplative selections like Book 2’s E major and Book 1’s C-sharp minor, E-Flat/D-sharp minor, and B-flat minor Preludes and Fugues flow without fuss and emerge from Ashkenazy’s fingers with no interpretive agenda in sight. On the other hand, even a virtuoso of Ashkenazy’s caliber must have practiced Book 2 like crazy to give melodic cogency and textural variety to the toccata-like G major Prelude, or to so brilliantly clarify the G minor Fugue’s hard-to-untangle polyphony despite the unusually fast tempo. Also, at times an edge of danger betrays the pianist’s surface “normalcy”, as in the hard-driven Book 2 F minor Fugue, or the Book 1 A major Fugue, with its upward, zigzagging lines boasting unusual nervous energy.
Decca’s sonics are not especially warm or full-bodied when sampled alongside the Hewitt and Koroliov editions, yet they’re clear and detailed all the same. Furthermore, Decca offers more economic incentive among full-priced choices by squeezing all 48 Preludes and Fugues onto three discs as opposed to the standard four–or even the five that Barenboim, Michael Levinas, and Rosalyn Tureck (her 1970s BBC cycle) require. In all, this is a most distinct and significant addition to Vladimir Ashkenazy’s wide-ranging piano discography. [4/17/2006]
