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Bach’s
Well-Tempered Clavier (WTC) is not a great piece of music
like the “Eroica” symphony or “The Rite of
Spring”. Rather, it is a musical window on the pulsating
field of energy which surrounds us and which we perceive as
the Universe. Andrew Rose of Pristine Audio, by dint of enormous
labor and artistry, has rescued this historical performance,
previously comfortably residing in the EMI House of the Dead,
and given it the breath of life to bring us its meaning for
today’s world. It reveals Edwin Fischer as a brilliant,
virile, imaginative pianist fully equal to all the challanges
of the Well-Tempered Clavier.
While
listening to this work, I enjoyed the thought that so many
great musicians have experienced the same music I was hearing.
Beethoven was introduced to the work at age ten by his teacher
and began his teenage day by playing several preludes and
fugues. Beethoven said in later years, “it is far more
than just a brook (German: Bach); it is an ocean”. Mozart
studied the WTC sufficiently to write new preludes for six
of the fugues; one wonders why? Both Shostakovich and Rodion
Shchedrin were inspired to write their own canonical 24.
The
recordings available of the Well Tempered Clavier are without
number. In my own collection, they range from Mieszeslav Horzowski,
who recorded a few preludes and fugues at his 100th birthday
concert to Albert Wong, who recorded all of Book II at the
age of 10 and also wrote the program notes. I never considered
Edwin Fischer more than an “historically important”
pianist. I respected him for his Bach concerti, for his Beethoven
“Emperor” Concerto with Furtwangler and for being
the first pianist to record Bach’s WTC. I can now say
that, as a result of listening to Pristine Audio’s restoration,
that judgment is completely wrong. Edwin Fischer is a great
pianist, one of the greatest pianists of the first half of
the 20th century. His recording of the Bach WTC can be matched
by few of the many pianists or harpsichordists of the post
World-War II period. I know that this is a lot to claim; I
shall try to substantiate it in the paragraphs that follow.
It
is often said that keyboard technique improved greatly after
WWII and that some of the greats of the past could be outplayed
by today’s 13-year-old girl piano student (e.g. Cortot,
Gieseking). Not so Fischer—listen to his technique in
Book 1: IX, XV; Book II: VI, XX. Unlike Glen Gould, his technique
does not dazzle and is never obtrusive, but is always in the
service of the music.
The
incredible variety of color with which Fischer invests the
preludes is to me unmatched: playful, innocent, laughing,
pouting, sad, and on and on. There are few tempo or dynamic
markings and here Fischer’s great European tradition
really shows in the confident and daring range of his choices,
in his lack of fear and trembling before one of the great
edifices of European culture.
Counterpoint
is good for us, we are told. We are to follow it and appreciate
it. Fischer shows us that voices, entries, counter-subjects
and stretti don’t matter. He plays the music and a fugue
as simply an essay in inevitability—always alive, always
forward moving. Listen to Book 1: VIII; Book 2: V, XIII, XXII.
There
is an occasional failure. Book 1: XXIV is the worst. The grief-stricken
B minor prelude has a moving base with a contrapuntally dissonant
two-part treble reminiscent of the opening chorus of the “St
John Passion”. Bach indicates that each part is to be
repeated. Fischer does not take the repeats. The fugue is
marked Largo. Fischer plays it more like an Andante, robbing
it of its burden of grief. A rare failure in a great performance.
One
must sum up by saying that a great restoration job has made
it possible to hear a revelatory performance. When I hear
Gould perform these works, I think, “How great a pianist
Gould is or sometimes how great Bach is”. When I hear
this Fischer performance, I think how happy I am to be alive.
Reviewer:
Bill Rosen |
No
mere historical curiosity, Fischer's performance 
