J.s. Ryan, Tolkiens View: Windows Into His World

Maria João Pires “shapes and colours every phrase, and with immaculate taste, and she makes sure the phrases end as eloquently as they begin,” wrote Gramophone in 1974. “She conveys not just the details but the relevance of every note to the whole … Best of all, she communicates everything she has discovered about the music, and it is worth having.” This Portuguese pupil of Wilhelm Kempff, Pires was one of the artists who defined the Erato label in the 1970s and 1980s. This 5-CD box gathers together the recordings she made over the period from 1976 to 1985 and it reflects the consistent focus of her repertoire, with its special emphasis on Austro-German composers of the Classical and early-Romantic periods. Embracing solo works, piano duets and concertos, it contains works by Mozart, Schumann, Beethoven, but also by Bach and Chopin.

Bach's setting of the Magnificat is one of his most often-recorded vocal works; as a rule, it's paired with one of Bach's lavishly scored festal cantatas. (The Easter Oratorio seems to be a current favorite.) Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan had a different idea: they've paired Bach's Magnificat with roughly contemporary settings by Johann Kuhnau, who was Bach's immediate predecessor in Leipzig, and Jan Dismas Zelenka, who was a composer at the court of Saxony in Dresden. Zelenka is an interesting composer, among the most underrated of the Baroque era. His writing is less dense and intricate than Bach's–at times it looks forward to the simpler, more elegant style of Haydn and C.P.E. Bach. Zelenka knew his counterpoint, however, and was fond of slipping the occasional surprising chord change into his music.

From the irresitably forceful opening bars of the English Suite's prelude to the throbbing repeated octaves of the D minor concerto, Richter shows why many of Bach's works are ideally suited to the piano. The Bach concerto is often regarded as a student piece, or relegated to refined performances on the harpsichord. Not here – the bookend movements are as maniacal, pulsing and driving as the best of John Coltrane or Prokofiev. The CD is worth it just for those movements, but Richter's treatment of the English Suite is equally enlightening, especially the Prelude and Gavotte.

Julian Bream is, without a doubt, one of the premiere classical guitarists of the modern recording era. Comparisons between great guitarists is often unfair and misleading as they each have their own styles - and each musician and his/her style tends to be particularly well suited to certain types of music. For example, Andres Segovia's style, cultivated by self-teaching throughout his now ended life, concentrated on flowing legatto smoothness and flowing melodies. Bream's, on the other hand, while equally masterful, is better characterized as emphasizing the precision and crispness of each and every individual note. What better composer to focus on to show this particular proclivity that J. S. Bach, whose work, having been written largely for the keyboards (harpsichord) but also for the lute and triple harp, tends to emphasize the kinds of music Bream excels at. Stacatto phrasings, each written to be played with crystalline exactness, are the types of pieces wherein Bream's magnificence is conspicuous and best showcased. Thus, the special relevance of this particular compilation of some of his best Bach work on this CD.

Here is a package that satisfies intellectual curiosity and is musically delightful. This two-disc set begins with a precise, but still musical, harpsichord performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations by Céline Frisch. Her Aria is clean, with both the melody and the bass line countermelody clear and phrased so that everything comes together well. Her ornaments fit naturally into the melodies throughout the variations, without drawing attention away from the tune, and she always has a sense of direction and forward momentum. The second disc contains the 14 canons on the first eight notes of the bass of the Aria from the Goldberg Variations and the two songs that are contained in the quodlibet near the end of the Variations. The canons are rich and warm performed by Café Zimmermann, a string sextet that includes a double bass, with excellent contrasts in the feel of each canon. The song Cabbages and Turnips Have Driven Me Away is the highlight of the two discs. Period instruments accompany Dominique Visse as he sings about a hunter bringing a girl home to meet his mother. Visse switches from a jolly, idiomatic tenor voice for the hunter to a smooth alto for the girl, and a slightly grating alto for the mother, often in mid-verse.

Here is another of Gustav Leonhardt's mixed programmes but this one, unlike the earlier European grand tour ((CD) 426 352-2PH, 4/90), is confined to German repertory and is played not on the harpsichord but on the clavichord. The earliest music is by Christian Ritter, who was born in the mid seventeenth century and who was based mainly in Halle where he was employed as an organist. His Suite in F sharp minor is an appealing work somewhat in the manner of Froberger; the opening Allemande is beautifully written and well sustained and the poignant Sarabande an affecting piece built on a descending octave pattern which gives it the character of a lament.

Andrei Gavrilov’s 1987 EMI cycle of the Bach Keyboard Concertos (played on the concert grand) generally finds this Russian firebrand on his best pianistic behavior. The engineering imparts an almost Mantovani-esque sheen to the strings of Neville Marriner’s Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, with the piano a little too forward in the mix. Loud piano passages have a metallic edge that contrasts with the rounded, eloquent sound Gavrilov makes in the slow movements, into which the pianist pours every ounce of heart and soul.