Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1

*** This title is a reissue of a Japanese release with liner notes in Japanese. ***

Wanda Landowska's reputation as a harpsichordist obscures her considerable achievements as a pianist, especially in regard to these extraordinary Mozart recordings, made at her Lakeville, Connecticut home in 1956. The sound is on the dry side, and Landowska's reposeful, intimately scaled readings rarely exceed mezzo-forte. Yet her seemingly infinite gradations of shading and touch, her immaculate control and timing, plus her well-considered and expressive embellishments (try the K. 333 sonata first movement's exposition for a few elaborate surprises) add up to a master class in style from which many of today's historic-minded interpreters can learn and benefit.

A singing impulse consistently governs Landowska's liquid trills, proportioned rubatos, and finely tuned balances between the hands that ensure no dead spots. She arpeggiates chords with the utmost specificity, abetted by a masterful and sophisticated finger legato technique. As a result, she employs the sustain pedal sparingly and tellingly. Although these performances were reissued on CD only by RCA Japan, they now gain a welcome lease on life courtesy of Arkivmusic.com's "on demand" reprint program. Notes are in Japanese only.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

*** This title is a reissue of a Japanese release with liner notes in Japanese. ***

One of my favourite Bach keyboard works, BWV 988, the Goldberg Variations, seems to have been taken over by versions for piano in my collection. A candlelit performance by Trevor Pinnock at Dyrham Park House lives on in the memory however, and Landowska’s performance is stately to say the least. Her opening tempi are withheld, building the foundations of an interpretation which arches over the entire set of variations, which is the way it should be. The full weight of the Pleyel instrument is also brought forth in measured doses, and the simpler textures of the two-part variations are unencumbered by extraneous and unnecessary effects. Landmarks along the way stand like granite monuments in the musical landscape, and Variation 21; Canone alla settima, and the fantasia-like Variation 25 are both forward looking and somehow nostalgic. The story is a long and serious one, but the listener is encouraged at each turn by lighter moments, and with Variation 26 we are homeward bound and no mistake. The arrival of the Quodlibet, with its little song quotations is our salvation, and the final Aria our ‘Memento Mori’. It is Bach’s epic novel in musical form, and you will be hard put to find a better storyteller than Landowska.

-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International [reviewing RCA 67891]

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