It’s a long time since people believed that because the Art of Fugue was printed in open score, it was not intended for performance and was purely didactic in purpose; numerous recordings for diverse instrumentations have nailed that misconception and revealed the expressive qualities of Bach’s still astonishing contrapuntal complexities. Charles Rosen (whose recording – CBS, 3/69 – should surely be reissued) made a case for the piano being a highly suitable medium to bring out the interplay of voices: accepting that, all one asks is that it should not be played in a style antipathetic to Bach.
Vladimir Feltsman, a Moscow-born pianist now resident in the USA, begins this great work at a reverential snail’s pace which seems to herald a return to the Tureck era: fortunately this is followed by a brisk, vigorously pointed Contrapunctus II, and there is considerable vitality in many of the subsequent fugues (which Feltsman intersperses with the canons), though in the unfinished fugue on three subjects (which he leaves in the air) he becomes dreadfully sentimental at the B-A-C-H entry. What is really dismaying is the harsh tone of his brutally aggressive fortes, at which Bach would have thrown up his hands in horror; the performance of Contrapunctus VIII can be characterized only as ugly thumping, and Contrapunctus XI, after an attractive quiet opening, is just as bad. It isn’t as if Feltsman can’t be delicate when he wants to be – Contrapunctus VII is engagingly quick and light, as is the Octave Canon’s lively jig – and his fleetness of finger is admirable (as in Contrapunctus IX), though he overdoes the speed in Contrapunctus IV. But the French Overture is made heavily pompous (with double-dotting only here and there), and Contrapunctus V is subjected to unstylish rubatos and inserted dramatic pauses. Even this isn’t as bad as the Canon by augmentation and diminution, which is pulled about to the point of distortion. Yet he can give a controlled, delightful lift to the invertible fugue and to that for two keyboards, both of which he himself plays by over-dubbing (and before which, curiously, he makes a 54 second pause).
A decidedly curate’s-eggy performance, then: for the Art of Fugue on the piano I would stick to Kocsis or MacGregor.'