Here is an inspiring collection, with more of Shostakovich’s Prelude and Fugue performances than have ever been brought together on one disc, in superbly remastered recordings. I don’t have details of their precise dates or venues, but if they were not made at the same time you would hardly guess so from the uniform excellence of the results – just a suggestion of scratchiness remains on one or two tracks. On my review copy the first note of the Prelude in G has disappeared, though Revelation tell me that this has now been corrected.
Shostakovich never made any secret of his fallibility as a pianist, and the faster fugues in particular are scrambly, in a way that suggests not legitimate impetuosity but straightforward pianistic anxiety. But the slips and spills pale into insignificance beside the sheer authority and character of the playing. The C major Prelude immediately takes us into the pure, sane world that betokens the composer’s escape from mundaneness into the higher reality of music, probably the purest he had ever composed (the opening of the First String Quartet, also in C major, has something of the same feeling). The A minor Prelude has a ‘Rustle of Spring’-like impressionist character not even the redoubtable Nikolaieva could emulate.
And so it goes on. The slower pieces are especially wonderful – intensely sustained and coloured with subtle, dark, emotional shadings I don’t think anyone else has quite matched. The long sinking to rest of the F sharp minor Fugue is nothing short of masterly, and its massive five-part major-mode counterpart, which I have never been able to hear without some impatience, has an immensely moving, timeless gravitas. The stoical inwardness of the G sharp minor Prelude is an object-lesson in how to perform a Shostakovich passacaglia – relevant to conductors as well as pianists.
I look at the nearly 20 minutes of spare capacity on the disc and feel a twinge of regret that one or two of the remaining six Preludes and Fugues Shostakovich recorded could not have been included. That doesn’t stop me from hailing this as the most important issue of my reviewing year so far.'