Tureck

This long-deleted Essential Classics reissue (available again courtesy of Arkivmusic.com’s on-demand reprint program) comprises the first CD remastering of two separate Bach piano releases. One disc features Rosalyn Tureck’s Bach Album, an early-1981 digital production made up mostly of short pieces, plus the Aria and Variations in Italian Style. The close-up yet warm sonics capture the full measure of Tureck’s technical specificity, subtle use of color, and micromanaged dynamics. Notice her absolute linear control in the F minor suite’s Prelude (first sound clip), or how her seemingly over-detached articulations (the seventh Italian variation) always maintain a lilting presence.

Bach & Tureck at Home: Aria with Thirty Variations, BWV 988, Clavierübung, Part IV ("Goldberg Variations")
Rosalyn Tureck, Piano
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC (tracks): 270 MB | Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Classical Music # TROY007 | Country/Year: US 1988
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque, Piano

"Rosalyn Tureck's recording is very special indeed- there is no other record of Bach played on the piano quite as compelling as this."

All of the important interpretations by the “high priestess of Bach” - The basis of all piano music - Incl. “Well-Tempered Clavier”, “Goldberg Variations”, the Partitas, the Italian Concerto, the French Overture, the Capriccio in B flat major, and many more.

Sharon Isbin - Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez und Spanische Gitarrenstücke
Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra / Hideomi Kuroiwa
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 162 MB | Full Artwork: 32 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Denon "This is Classic" # DEG-10024 | Country/Year: Germany 1994
Genre: Classical | Style: Spanish Guitar, Early 20th Century, Romantic

"Described by the Boston Globe's Michael Manning as a musician who plays "beyond virtuosity," guitarist Sharon Isbin has been a consistent challenge for critics, who struggle to find the right superlative that would do justice to her exquisite playing. "In her hands," wrote Anne Midgette in The New York Times, "the guitar takes on the precision of a diamond, each note a clear, shining facet that catches, prism-like, a glimpse of the spectrum." In essence, a performance by Isbin is like a painting by Vermeer: a formally impeccable and inexhaustible work of art."

The Goldberg Variations are a pinnacle of Bach’s art. Conceived for harpsichord, the work has been transcribed for quite different instruments. . . Richard Boothby’s version for his own consort of viols, Fretwork, is arguably the most unusual, in that it opts for a soundworld that looks even further back in time. Part of the justification for such a setting must be Bach’s own liking for viola da gamba, already then old-fashioned…. Boothby’s setting is dexterously divided between various combinations of the treble, tenor and bass viols, and he achieved some magical effects, notably (…) in variations of gossamer passagework.