These live performances stem from Wanda Landowska’s Frick Collection concerts in New York, broadcast in the early 1950s. Little if any interpretive differences distinguish the Bach Preludes and Fugues from Landowska’s commerically recorded counterparts. By contrast, the power behind the unbuttoned rhetoric characterizing Landowska’s superb shellac version of the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue had turned to mannerism by 1950, as this live performance reveals.
Listeners accustomed to modern-day period-instrument Couperin practitioners may find Landowska’s colorful registrations a bit much, yet she certainly achieves the characterful contrasts she desires. Compared to her straightforward traversal of La Favorite on 78s, Landowska’s older rendition is rhythmically looser and takes more time to smell the embellishmental roses, so to speak. There are no annotations, recording information is incomplete, and several selections are not pitched properly.
