Dip Your Ears: No. 283 (Martin Fröst’s maudlin’ mushy B.A.C.H.)

Martin Fröst B.A.C.H. (Sony, 2024) US | UK | DE

Martin Fröst and his album of Bach Transcriptions. You have been warned!

Martin Fröst is truly a generational musician who has pushed his instrument places it had not hitherto gone, a paragon of quality in established repertoire and bold, glad explorer of all things new. Occasionally, as with his penchant for dance intruding into his performances, I found that he could be “a bit much” for me, watching his gyrations. But it never affected the quality of the output.

Because he is the kind of artist where you would assume that every release of his must be stupendous (a fairly rare category also occupied by the likes of William Youn, Manfred Honeck, Marc-André Hamelin, Mitsuko Uchida, Pygmalion), this album, “B.A.C.H.” comes as a bit of a surprise and might be worth the warning, for a warning it is.

Regular ionarts-readers will know I have more than just a penchant for Bach… and moreover Bach-transcriptions of all kinds. Add a favorite artist into the mix and the assumption may well be made that we have an absolute winner at our hands here… and somehow, we just don’t. But what went wrong?

Well, for one, the selection of bits and bobs from Bach’s oeuvre, appears as perfectly haphazard. A collection of the most memorable tunes, strung together without little more rhyme or reasons than that they might be tempting to play on the clarinet, if one happens to be a Bach-loving clarinetist. They are, as per Sony’s marketing blurb, “Fröst’s favourite pieces that have been with him constantly throughout his own musical expeditions.” But the result is not, as might be ideally hoped for, some sort of exotic-sounding new Suite of Bach, it’s the output from a randomizer – and one that did not appear to take key-relationships much (if at all) into consideration. The brevity of the pieces (just under two minutes on average) and the resultant number of grating gearchanges don’t help.

Nor is the adaptation for the clarinet particularly fortuitous. Even a wizard like Martin Fröst can only play one line – usually a melody. But in Bach, it’s about counterpoint. The missing parts are thus entrusted to other instruments, most prominently among them the bass. Not inappropriate, generally speaking. But double bassist Sebastien Dubé can play as delicately as he wants to, the nature of the music pushes him to the forefront quite often. For a third of the disc, the album sounds like a solo double bassist with clarinet accompaniment. For another third like a lame imitation of the Jacques Loussier Trio (try the Prelude in D minor for size), and for the rest like a book of Bach-style Etudes for clarinet.

We get Fröst crawling through the Goldberg Variations Aria. Naturally, we get the Air from the third Orchestral Suite, though lugubrious, is probably one of the more successful pieces – if it doesn’t come across as painfully obvious. Truly beautiful on its own is the arrangement for clarinet and of “Wenn ich einmal soll scheiden” from the Matthew Passion for Clarinet and Cello (Anastasia Kobekina). When it isn’t bass or cello supporting the clarinet, it’s Jonas Nordberg’s theorbo. The “Ave Maria”, a “Mediation on the Prelude” for dominant cello and undulating clarinet sounds, alas, shlocky as if it was re-arranged by a lesser Saint-Saëns. Oh, and ABBA’s Benny Anderson tinkles along on the piano to the closing track.

Clunkers and gems as are included on this disc, the whole comes out as much less than the sum of its parts. A friend, moderately versed in classical music, who listened with me, not knowing what was playing, or why, said, once I had voiced some criticism of the disc myself: “Yes, I was wondering why you were listening to such a… childish album.” Thereby hitting the nail on the head.

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This review had been previously published on Classics Today.

Critic’s Notebook: Concentus Musicus and the Arnold Schoenberg Choir in Seasonal Bach

Also published in Die Presse: Feiern mit dem Concentus: Bach im Musikverein

J.S.Bach Christmas Oratorio N.Harnoncourt, Concentus, ASC (DHM, 2007) US | UK | DE

J.S.Bach Christmas Oratorio J.v.Veldhoven, Nederlandse Bachvereniging (Challenge, 2003gg) US | UK | DE

Bach and a Message for Contemplation

Stefan Gottfried is not Nikolaus Harnoncourt, but that's OK

In the winter of 2006/2007, Nikolaus Harnoncourt led and recorded the Christmas Oratorio in the Golden Hall with Concentus Musicus, the Arnold Schoenberg Choir, and an incomparable line-up of singers (Christine Schäfer, Bernarda Fink, Werner Güra, Christian Gerhaher, Gerald Finley).

On Saturday evening, in that very same hall, Stefan Gottfried conducted the same forces in the first two of the six cantatas that make up the oratorio. Had Werner Güra not fallen ill, one of those original soloists would even have been back.

Anyone who’s carried either the recording or the memory of it in their inner ear and compared the two would not have failed to notice that the twenty-year-old interpretation sounded fresher, brisker, more spontaneous: colourful, warm, heartfelt, yet crisp.

It would have been a pity to let such an—admittedly unfair—comparison keep one from appreciating the beautiful things offered here. Must everything always be a chase for superlatives, for “events”, for the sensational? Must every concert be earth-shattering? Must we, just because a performance may not eclipse everything previously heard, immediately grumble and go excavating for tiny blemishes to justify our disappointment? “Aha! The continuo organ wasn’t always in rhythm. There—those trumpets squeaked. An oboe was flat. Or the stand-in evangelist sounded heraldic rather than urgent or particularly text-attuned. And the soprano’s mordents and trills were more of a wobbled vibrato.” Can’t something simply be good?

Yes. It can, and it should. Especially in this reflective season, when one might consider not letting the best become the enemy of the good. Why not, then, delight in the Arnold Schoenberg Choir, in sensational shape, singing their choruses and chorales with precision, point, and an impressive dynamic span: “Break forth, O beauteous heavenly light!” — what a radiant line, that alone. Or take Olivia Vermeulen’s tenderly delivered “Schlafe, mein Liebster”. Or, in the Advent cantata of the first half, “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland”: the delicately sustained recitative “Siehe, ich stehe vor der Tür”, sung by bass Manuel Walser. Or again the choir, in the instructive chorale “Freu dich sehr, o meine Seele, und vergiss all Not und Qual” from Wachet! Betet! Betet! Wachet!

And then there was the Concentus itself, playing with commitment and good spirit — even if the exuberant timpanist, alternately whispering and metaphorically (and literally) hitting the big drum, almost stole the show in the first cantata, which proclaims to us the joyful news of Christ’s birth. In short: It was beautiful.

Concentus Musicus Wien

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Critic’s Notebook: Heavenly Secular Cantatas from the Vienna Academy Orchestra, Martin Haselböck, and The Supremes

Also published in Die Presse: Musikverein: So himmlisch tönen weltliche Kantaten

Johann Sebastian Bach Cantata BWV 214 "Tönet, ihr Pauken! Erschallet, Trompeten!" et al Sampson, Danz, Padmore, Kooy P.Herreweghe / Collegium Vocale Gent (Harmonia Mundi, 2005) US | UK | DE

Johann Sebastian Bach Cantata BWV 134a "Die Zeit, die Tag und Jahre macht" et al Danz, Ullmann H.Rilling, Gächinger Kantorei, Bach-Collegium Stuttgart (Hänssler Classic, 2000) US | UK | DE

Johann Sebastian Bach Cantata BWV 206 "Schleicht, Spielende Wellen, Und Murmelt Gelinde" et al Larsson, von Magnus, Prégardien, Mertens T.Koopman / Amsterdam BO&C (Erato/Challenge, 1997, 2004) US | UK | DE

Celebratory Bach to Die For

A slice of Bach-heaven on earth, courtesy of the Orchester Wiener Akademie and their soul-stirred singers.

The Orchester Wiener Akademie is a bit like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates: you never know what you’re going to get. Sometimes you bite into a bit of a turd. But on Sunday morning in the Musikverein, the hand that reached in pulled out a truffle of the highest order – everything that makes the OWA glorious when it’s in top form. It began with the program. The sounds that filled the Golden Hall were, at first, familiar: the Christmas Oratorio. Fair enough for the first Sunday of Advent, especially in a world that can’t seem to tell Advent and Christmas apart anymore.

But – thankfully – it wasn’t the Oratorio. It was the secular cantata BWV 214, Tönet ihr Pauken! Erschallet, Trompeten! – the birthday serenade for Maria Josepha, whose best bits Bach later upcycled into his Christmas cycle. (“Upcycling” is exactly what we’d call that common Baroque practice today – all the more since Bach only ever parodied from worldly works upwards to sacred ones, never the other way round.) Alongside came Die Zeit, die Tag und Jahre Macht, BWV 134a, and another grand secular cantata, Schleicht, spielende Wellen, BWV 206 – in which four rivers, the Danube included, butter up Elector Friedrich August II. (Its cheerful relief that the Vistula is no longer clogged with body parts offers a vivid glimpse into 17th-century daily reality.)

Magnificent works all, and in magnificent scoring. And what a band! Beyond the aforementioned brilliantly buoyant natural trumpets, the melting flute trio, the ever-superb solo oboe, the cello, and strings playing with real intent, there was an eight-singer team (doubling as chorus) that made the heart leap. To single out individuals feels downright caddish – and yet: the round-toned tenderness Stefan Zenkl that showed ; the way Daniel Johannsen (who can breathe life into any text to make the soul smile) and Reginald Mobley (even with a smaller but lively voice) let the duet “Es streiten, es siegen” flow and dance; how Miriam Feuersinger sang her Bellona with intimate intensity – it was delight, pure and simple.

And so the music streamed along joyfully, steered with blissful sureness by Martin Haselböck, fully in his element.

Photocredit: Amar Mehmedinovic

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Critic’s Notebook: Gunar Letzbor, Telemann, and Other Baroque Encounters

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Seltene barocke Erscheinungen

Tits'n'Telemann

J.P.v.Westhoff, Sei Partite a Violino Gunar Letzbor Arcana

G.P.Telemann, 2 Fantasias for Solo Violin Gunar Letzbor Pan Classics

J.J.Vilsmayr, Artificosus Concentus pro Camera Gunar Letzbor Arcana

J.S.Bach, Solo Sonatas (BWV 1001, 1003, 1005) Gunar Letzbor Pan Classics

Curious concert I was asked to attend. First of all, it happened in the Vienna Konzerthaus’ smallest main hall, the gorgeous, bright, yellow but uneconomic 320-seat Schubert Saal. It’s the hall where the Alban Berg Quartet got their start before attracting the following that allowed them to graduate to the Mozart Saal and eventually play their respective recitals twice in that hall to satisfy demand. Now, if it is used at all, it’s usually rented out for concerts or events… except, apparently, for the “Zyklus Ars Antiqua Austria”, which is part of the Konzerthaus’ official programming, featuring Gunar Letzbor and his early music ensemble in a series of 3+1 concerts.

On February 25th, I was at the "+1", called “Bach in Private” – and it was a one-man show with Gunar Letzbor and his baroque violin. Very casual and informal in feel, a Bachiana if you will, and I wouldn’t be half surprised if Letzbor knows every one of his subscribers by name. (The hall was about half full.) He started with a long anecdote of driving across the Alps a few nights before, with snow-related mishaps and adventures. Then he elaborated on Johann Paul Westhoff, the “father of solo violin music”, who invented his own ‘dual’ system of notation on eight-line staves and two clefs as a means to early copyright protection) and proceeded to perform, by way of example, Westhoff’s Suite No.6 in D-major. The ear grasps for the nearest known music, which is of course Bach, an involuntary act that might distract from the Westhoff Suite’s originality. Similarities exist, of course, but the differences are considerable and there’s an archaic nature that came through nicely, as Letzbor worked hard on the Suite’s four movements.

Telemann (another – very important – copyright champion of his time) is only 25 years older than Westhoff. Yet, his Fantasie No.9, already marks the end of the baroque period whereas Westhoff’s Suite had opened it for that type of composition. There’s a definite flirting with the Galant style going on here, on Georg Philipp’s part, while the Fantasie No.4 is still rather more demure and academic. Speaking of “flirting”: There were three young characters in the concert that didn’t look like your typical “Ars Antiqua” subscription holders. A young lad, I hesitate to call him “gentleman”, looked so ostentatiously bored, that we would have believed him, even if he hadn’t tried to quietly talk on his phone during the performance of the Westhoff. After the Suite, an audience member informed him, in no uncertain words, about the finer points of concert etiquette, which resulted in sulking looks from one of the young ladies in his company and more ostentatious ennui from the communicative offender.

If you thought this was bizarre, it got a lot better, still. Evidently energized by the Telemann, the third of the group, a female perhaps in her very early 20s, got up mid-Suite and carefully un-peeled herself from her jacket and sweater, inviting a view of her pushed-up assets. After each of the Suites, she jumped up to launch into something resembling a standing ovation, carefully bouncing up and down while daintily clapping at Letzbor’s performance. There seemed to be something of a look of pride in her carefully done-up face, as she juggled standard violin-recital behavior with her early-music love, which so clearly was beating strongly beneath that liberally exposed cleavage. Once done with this performance, she proceeded, still standing, still in the middle of the concert, to get dressed again… and marched, her two friends in tow, out of the Schubert Saal, still before intermission, unconscionably missing the nine-partite Johann Joseph Vilsmayr Partita No.4 in D major that followed. Not that the mind easily shifted back to this excerpt from the 1715 “Artificiosus conceptus pro camera”, after that equally rare earlier baroque display… but the little lecture on scordatura, and the bagpipe character that the violin developed in sections of the nicely flowing, even groovy Partita, did eventually recapture the imagination of the baffled and bemused audience.

For the concluding Bach Partita No.1, the preceding talk about the ancient technique of “diminution” that Bach employs in this work, actually helped to hear the work in a different light; mere variations became audible intensifications of the preceding movements, once the Double hits on each of the movements. The performance was as sympathetic as the preceding ones had been; hardly perfect – but somehow that was never quite the point. Rather, it felt as though one had joined an acquaintance for a performance-lecture (I was reminded of a Charles Rosen performance at La Maison Française from years ago). This impression only deepened, when Letzbor reprised the Sarabande, playing it in an entirely different style as just before, now more forward-thrusting, mellifluous, lighter. A nice cap to a baroque geek’s perfect delightful night of hearing and learning. (A shame that @SugarTitz97 missed it.)

Photo © Gunar Letzbor?

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Critic’s Notebook: Too much beauty from the Dresden Staatskapelle and András Schiff?

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Retro-Schönklang im Konzerthaus: So hat man Bach und Mozart lange nicht gehört

An excess of gorgeousness, if that is possible

I’ve never been to a concert where an orchestra played so well and annoyed me as much. The travel-contingent of the Dresden Staatskapelle was in Vienna with Sir András Schiff conducting and playing with them, and it was a bath of beauty, mostly. But was something amiss?

Throwback-Bach

Certainly with Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.5 (taking on the part of the overture in this most classical of overture-concerto-symphony sandwich concerts). Not necessarily the very old-fashioned sound and style from the interpreters, concert master Matthias Wollong and solo flute Sabine Kittel, who played next to Schiff while the latter who was operating on his gorgeous, shiny, red-and-black Mahagony Bösendorfer. While t’s a matter of taste (and certainly not to mine), hearing Bach performed as if by Karajan, it might posisbly have been neat enough to hear that kind of throwback-sonority (but at reasonably brisk tempi), had it not been for the balance being completely off, usually with Schiff drowning out his colleagues - or the soloists together the little orchestra.

Retro-Mozart

A similar kind of retro-prettiness hung over Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.23 in A major, played with a flawlessness and beauty that is rare and impressive, but that also felt spelled-out, rather than impetuous or spontaneous, and had its share of sentimental moments that bordered mawkishness. If anyone found it too slow, Schiff made up for it with a racing encore of the first movement of Bach’s Italian Concerto.

Confectioner’s Mendelssohn

Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony raced out the gates like a horse possessed. Or, as I wrote in my German review, “chattering like a stork on cocaine”. (This I had better kept to myself, as it prompted a slew of sternly worded letters to the editor, not all of which stayed clear of invective and several suggesting that it was not the storks that were under the influence of the mentioned substance.) The well-oiled machine that was the Dresden Staatskapelle played gorgeously. András Schiff seemed to enjoy it as much as the audience, happily waving his arms before them. With the speed determined at the outset, the symphony seemed to uncoil inexorably, quite independent of any further movemenet on the part of Schiff's. Every group was clean, the sections together, and the strings shone with a noble, dark timbre. Beauty goes a long way, not the least in Mendelssohn, but at least to these ears, there was something curiously unsatisfactory about the relentless loveliness. It rang a little hollow, giving the Symphony a Midsummer Night's Dream-esque, fairy-like character. The orchestral encore – Mozart’s Figaro overture, didn’t undo that impression. Suggesting that, after so much sugar and beauty, "a beer and a cigarette were what was needed in order to return to the real world", also did not go over well with the reader who thought the suggestion “disgusting, classless, repulsive, objectionable” and altogether unworthy of the fine newspaper I write for. I wonder if it had been better, had I suggested instead that after a concert such as this, the only thing to do was to wake up – and bow before such skill.

Photo © Manuel Chemineau

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Critic’s Notebook: Alexander Malofeev gives his recital debut in Vienna

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Sensationell: Ausnahmepianist Alexander Malofeev begeistert bei seinem Wiener Solodebüt

A piano recital to remember: Alexander Malofeev in his solo debut in Vienna

There was a very young, very blond man in front of the Steinway, sitting low, and bent like an adult in a soapbox racer. Did he saw the piano bench’s legs off? For his Vienna recital debut, Alexander Malofeev, the up-and-coming Russian piano star, chose one half of baroque music and one half of Russian late romantics. He started with Händel, the Suite in B-flat major: There was terrific energy in the last of the variation of the Aria and lovely contrast in the lyrical-tender Minuet. Attacca, Malofeev went right into the Purcell Ground in C minor and from there into Georg Muffat’s Passacaglia from his Apparatus musico-organisticus, giving this part the sense of being a grand suite. In all of this he was unfazed, unsentimental, providing long, structured passages rather than a string of merely beautiful moments. You could hear the structure – and it was beautiful to do so.

He allowed for applause before the twice-transcribed Bach Concerto BWV 593 (in any case too famous to have fitted snugly into that imaginary baroque suite) and almost seemed pleasantly surprised, amazed that he got any, never mind such a boisterousness round. The Vivaldi concerto for two violins, turned into a concerto for solo organ by Bach and then liberally-romantically transcribed to suit the piano by Samuil Feinberg, was a thundering, bell-tinkling affair, imposing and tender in turn, elaborate and ornate here, introverted and sober there. A grand crescendo thunderously reminded of the work’s intermittent origins on the organ. Grand stuff.

Only very minimally less impressive was the second half, beginning with Scriabin’s Prélude and Nocturne for left hand, op.9. Chopin-like, as early Scriabin is wont to be, and for once a Wittgenstein-unrelated work just for the left hand; apparently Scriabin wrote it for himself after a bout with tendinitis and/or wanting to brag in front of an audience. Then again, it’s a piece that’s surprisingly devoid of obvious braggadocio. More dreamy, if anything. Still impressive, though, especially since Scriabin doesn’t at all let the ‘one-hand-only’ thing limit him to which range on the keyboard he writes for. Incidentally, Malofeev is no braggart himself, either. Nor, in a way, even a virtuoso who goes for the fireworks, even though his brilliant technique would surely allow him to do so.

The concluding Rachmaninov (the first two bits from the Morceaux de fantaisie, a transcription of “Lilacs” from his Twelve Songs op.21, and the B-flat minor Sonata) was full-throated but not violent. Most pleasingly, Malofeev never succumbs to romantic treacle and the Sonata suffered only from being boring because, hey, it’s Rachmaninov. Not that everyone in the hollering crowd felt the same way about good old Sergei, but the encores from Mikhail Pletnev’s Nutcracker Suite made up for it, for anyone who did. What a bloody extraordinary recital!

Photo © Manuel Chemineau

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Critic’s Notebook: Anderszewski Recital, Musikverein

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Piotr Anderszewski: Chopin-Mazurkas verwandeln sich bei ihm in Muränen

A Masterclass in Relaxation and Rubato: Piotr Anderszewski at the Musikverein

K.Szymanowski, B.Bartók, L.Janáček, Mazurkas Op. 50, 14 Bagatelles etc. Piotr Anderszewski Warner

Piotr Anderszweski was only the replacement, at his piano recital at Vienna’s Musikverein: Maria João Pires had been scheduled to perform but had to cancel. Not a shabby replacement. Few patrons in the well-filled Golden Hall could have complained beforehand; fewer still afterwards. For one, it’s nice that he isn’t a piano-bench dancer, who tries to tell you with his contortions how you are supposed to feel about the music, rather than making you feel that way through how he plays. He’s got a steady hand at the wheel, and wields a (surprisingly) wild rubato with it, which turned the three Chopin Mazurkas op.59 into relaxed Nocturnes that would, every so often, suddenly, rear their head, and shoot forward like a moray eel aiming for the unsuspecting diver’s naked toe. At those moments, when, after stealing so much time in some places, he had to give it all back at the end of a phrase, the notes became pushed together to the point of cluster chords. Five (out of 20) of Szymanowski’s Mazurkas op.50 varied between relaxed and disembodied, almost indifferent on the one hand (metaphorically, not literally), and lively and besotted with tonal color on the other.

Bartók’s 14 Bagatelles, op.6, are little character pieces that come in all shapes and colors, with cathedral-like grandness one second, prickly little will-o’-the-wisps the next, tickling the ears, turning in the wind this way, then that, and adding a share of lovelorn bitterness. Anderszewski made them come alive, just moving his fingers, entirely unfazed. Where the opening E minor Bach Partita BWV 830 had been so flexible, it had into something intriguing yet almost worryingly romantic, the concluding B major Partita BWV 825, was exalted and sublime, with a steady pulse and forward momentum, very lively (Courante), then exuding celestial peace (Sarabande), a tinkling of bells (Menuet), and dashing, compelling in the concluding Gigue. Bach and Bartók as encores, too, and especially the latter’s Three Hungarian Folk Songs from Csík shone in coy, playful light, sounded almost like Mompou.

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Briefly Noted: Rousset's Artful Fugue

Bach, Die Kunst der Fuge, Christophe Rousset (released on January 12, 2024) Aparté AP313D | 83'02"

Christophe Rousset waited until he was nearly 60 years old to record J.S. Bach's Die Kunst der Fuge for the first time. Captured at the Hôtel de l’Industrie in Paris toward the end of the pandemic year (November 29 to December 2, 2020), this new disc quickly rises to the top of the list of recordings on harpsichord, which actually are not that numerous. It is certainly in the running with Gustav Leonhardt's two recordings, as well as the exhaustively complete version by Davitt Moroney. Both of those were made decades ago. Rousset plays on a German harpsichord made by an anonymous craftsman, now in an unnamed private collection. The sound is close and warm, showing off the musician's smooth, connected touch and his patient unwinding of the piece's contrapuntal complexities, at often introspective, leisurely tempi.

Rousset has chosen not to record the incomplete "Fuga a tre soggetti" added as Contrapunctus XIV to the 1751 edition of the work, the version edited by and possibly added to by Bach's sons. (Leonhardt also left this final piece of the posthumous edition unrecorded, while Moroney composed his own completion of it.) A brilliant booklet essay by Gaëtan Naulleau, a musicologist at the University of Tours and formerly a recording reviewer and editor at Diapason, explains the thinking behind rejecting this late addition to the score. After playing Contrapunctus I to XIII in order, Rousset concludes with the four canons, leaving Canon I to the very end.

After treating Contrapunctus XIV as spurious, it seemed a little odd to include the two-harpischord arrangement of Contrapunctus XIII, a version also included only in the 1751 edition published after the elder Bach's death. The younger Belgian harpsichordist Korneel Bernolet takes the second part in this piece, a gesture recalling the younger Rousset's doing the same with his older colleague, Christopher Hogwood, many years ago: a sense of in turn handing on a tradition is poignant as Rousset himself moves closer to retirement. (Bernolet has assisted Rousset, as both conductor and harpsichordist with his ensemble Les Talens Lyriques, since 2014.) Both Contrapunctus XII and XIII are mirror fugues, meaning that the original notation of the fugue and its mirror notation, with all the parts inverted, both adhere to all the rules of counterpoint. Rousset and Bernolet play both rectus and inversus versions of both pieces, presumably adding their own arrangement of Contrapunctus XII for two harpsichords.

Naulleau, in his essay, notes an interesting possibility, that Bach's title for this dense work, The Art of Fugue, could be seen as a clapback aimed at an anonymously penned article lamenting that Bach had obscured his musical genious by an "Allzu-grosse Kunst" (all-too-great art). Indeed, for most listeners, the unrelenting contrapuntal density of the work can be stultifying if listened to in a single go. "One person, however, can follow the work from beginning to end without exhausting himself," he writes, "thanks to his profession, his training and the support of the score: the performer. For the pianist and musicologist Charles Rosen, The Art of Fugue is 'above all, a work to be played for oneself, to be felt under one's fingers as much as listened to'." One is only too happy to accompany Rousset as he goes on that journey.


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