The Well

The Iranian pianist, Ramin Bahrami, studied with Piero Rattalino at the conservatory “G. Verdi” in Milan, at the Accademia Pianistica “Incontri col Maestro” in Imola and with Wolfgang Bloser at the Hochschule für Musik in Stuttgart. He participated in master-courses with Alexis Weissenberg, András Schiff, Robert Levin and, in particular, with Rosalyn Tureck, the artist who, more than any other in the 20th century, popularized Bach’s works through her research and performances.

The Italian newspaper La Repubblica calls him almost the “most talented Bach pianist” in Italy, and Andrea Bacchetti has given concerts internationally on the world’s largest classical music stages. When Bacchetti talks about Bach, he calls his music “his life, his day and his night”. Hardly any other pianist manages to read Bach’s music in such a modern and precise way as the interpreter from Genoa does. On his latest release, he has now devoted himself to the second part of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Piano Book, one of the key works of the Baroque era, on whose music Bacchetti has specialized for years.

Following his acclaimed recording of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s complete solo keyboard works (RES10214), harpsichordist Steven Devine returns to Resonus to record one of the great pinnacles of the Baroque keyboard repertoire, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Das wohltemperierte Klavier (The Well-Tempered Clavier). For this first of two volumes, that explores the first book of this collection of forty-eight preludes and fugues, Devine uses an exquisite instrument built by Colin Booth after an instrument by the eighteenth century maker Johann Christof Fleischer.

Edwin Fischer's recording of the '48' was the first by a pianist of the set, and probably remains the finest of all.
Fischer might have agreed with András Schiff that Bach is the 'most romantic of all composers', for his superfine musicianship seems to live and breathe in another world. His sonority is as ravishing as it's apt, never beautiful for its own sake, and graced with a pedal technique so subtle that it results in a light and shade, a subdued sparkle or pointed sense of repartee that eludes lesser artists. No matter what complexity Bach throws at him, Fischer resolves it with a disarming poise and limpidity. All this is a far cry from, say, Glenn Gould's egotism in the '48'. Fischer showed a deep humility before great art, making the singling out of one or another of his performances an impertinence.