Cd01 A Physical Presence (part I) (1985)

One of two paired box sets chronicling the entirety of Kate Bush's recorded work as of 2018, Remastered features upgrades of her first seven albums: The Kick Inside, Lionheart, Never for Ever, The Dreaming, Hounds of Love, The Sensual World, and The Red Shoes. Apart from the remastering, there are no extras on this box – those have been shuffled off to Remastered, Vol 2 – but that's enough, considering that the albums haven't been revisited since their original CD releases. The remasters are clean and detailed, feeling fuller than their predecessors, and that's appropriate for music as sumptuous and transporting as this; the improved fidelity has the effect of making the music seem more vivid, not less.

The publication of the Partitas led to some ferment among music lovers in Germany. Some praised the works, others criticised them, but always in terms which suggest that they represented a turning point in harpsichord composition. Following the lead of the theoretician Johann Mattheson, the critics' principal complaint was the extreme technical demands, and the complexity of writing. In his biography of Bach, Johann Nikolaus Forkel writes of the Partitas: »One has hitherto seldom seen or heard harpsichord compositions of such excellence. He who learned to play some of these pieces well, was able to do well with them in the world; and even in our time a young artist can gain honour with them - brilliant, pleasing, expressive, and constantly fresh as they are.«