Bach/Nancarrow Piano Works
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Conlon Nancarrow, Johann Sebastian Bach
Label: Collins Classics
Magazine Review Date: 10/1996
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 108
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 7043-2
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| (Die) Kunst der Fuge, '(The) Art of Fugue' |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
Joanna MacGregor, Piano Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer |
| (3) Canons for Ursula |
Conlon Nancarrow, Composer
Conlon Nancarrow, Composer Joanna MacGregor, Piano |
| Studies for Player Piano, Movement: ~ |
Conlon Nancarrow, Composer
Conlon Nancarrow, Composer Joanna MacGregor, Piano |
| Studies for Player Piano, Movement: No. 6 |
Conlon Nancarrow, Composer
Conlon Nancarrow, Composer Joanna MacGregor, Piano |
| Studies for Player Piano, Movement: No. 11 |
Conlon Nancarrow, Composer
Conlon Nancarrow, Composer Joanna MacGregor, Piano |
Author: Bryce Morrison
Few pianists have recorded a more enterprising or vibrant repertoire than Joanna MacGregor, with the stress on continuities as well as contrasts and on the eternal verities underlying music of seemingly irreconcilable diversity. Now, following hard on the heels of her magnificent set of Messiaen’s Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jesus (Collins Classics, 5/96) she takes on an even more daunting task, coupling one of music’s profoundest enigmas with dazzling contemporary virtuosity. In her witty and incisive notes, MacGregor gently but firmly compels us to hear a vital relationship between eighteenth- and twentieth-century composers who see fugue and canon as the highest musical good, a “sounding mathematics” which “achieves a depth and simplicity and at times a luminous serenity”. Taking the Bach first, I feel sure that MacGregor would agree with Charles Rosen that in The Art of Fugue “there are almost no dramatic effects, the most fantastic modulations take place discreetly and the sequences are continuously varied with a delicacy unequalled in Baroque music”. MacGregor claims she has listened to recordings of what is arguably Bach’s summa on the harpsichord, orchestra, baroque ensemble, organ, piano, brass and saxophone quartets and, like Glenn Gould, she relishes its inviolate nature, its sublime lack of exclusivity.
Much of this would remain mere theory if Joanna MacGregor’s performances did not testify to her sense of Bach’s richness, intellectual grace and cunning. Immaculate, lucid and sensitive she reveals The Art of Fugue as an incomparable act of meditation and makes comparisons, even with pianists such as Tatyana Nikolaieva (Hyperion, 2/93) or Grigory Sokolov (Opus 111), seem peculiarly irrelevant.
MacGregor has, of course, recorded Bach and Nancarrow before for Collins (the former’s French Suites, 2/94 and the latter’s witty, cocktail banter, Prelude and Blues, 8/89) but here the juxtaposition is the thing. Using multi-track techniques she emulates and excels Nancarrow’s original player piano capacity for intricacy. Quaver-durations of a very fast tempo of 5,5,6,4; 5,5,3,4; 5,4,3,3,2 (I am quoting MacGregor again) in Study No. 11, end in a fantastic virtuoso uproar and remind one of a related complexity in “Canon B”, the second of the Three Canons for Ursula. The difficulties are immense but in Joanna MacGregor such music has a superlative champion. All her performances in their power and eloquence positively beg you to share her sense of discovery and exhilaration. The recordings are magnificent and all in all this is an indispensable issue for all intrepid explorers and for all musicians who relish a supreme play of the mind and imagination.'
Much of this would remain mere theory if Joanna MacGregor’s performances did not testify to her sense of Bach’s richness, intellectual grace and cunning. Immaculate, lucid and sensitive she reveals The Art of Fugue as an incomparable act of meditation and makes comparisons, even with pianists such as Tatyana Nikolaieva (Hyperion, 2/93) or Grigory Sokolov (Opus 111), seem peculiarly irrelevant.
MacGregor has, of course, recorded Bach and Nancarrow before for Collins (the former’s French Suites, 2/94 and the latter’s witty, cocktail banter, Prelude and Blues, 8/89) but here the juxtaposition is the thing. Using multi-track techniques she emulates and excels Nancarrow’s original player piano capacity for intricacy. Quaver-durations of a very fast tempo of 5,5,6,4; 5,5,3,4; 5,4,3,3,2 (I am quoting MacGregor again) in Study No. 11, end in a fantastic virtuoso uproar and remind one of a related complexity in “Canon B”, the second of the Three Canons for Ursula. The difficulties are immense but in Joanna MacGregor such music has a superlative champion. All her performances in their power and eloquence positively beg you to share her sense of discovery and exhilaration. The recordings are magnificent and all in all this is an indispensable issue for all intrepid explorers and for all musicians who relish a supreme play of the mind and imagination.'
Bach/Nancarrow Piano Works
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