Bach: Solo Keyboard Works [Box Set] [Box set, Import]

Johann Sebastian Bach (Composer), András Schiff (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: András Schiff
• Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach
• Audio CD (October 8, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 12
• Format: Box set, Import
• Note on Boxed Sets: During shipping, discs in boxed sets occasionally become dislodged without damage. Please examine and play these discs. If you are not completely satisfied, we'll refund or replace your purchase.
• Label: Decca
• ASIN: B00000IP73
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #168,041 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's the counterpoint, my friend!, August 3, 2009

By 

Y.P. - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Bach: Solo Keyboard Works [Box Set] (Audio CD)

In this "golden era of classical music recordings", there are literally hundreds (if not thousands) of recordings of Bach's solo keyboard works available in the market, using instruments from the harpsichord (with 1 or 2 manuals), organ, clavichord and early fortepiano to the modern grand piano. I have listened to many of them. Truth be told, even though each good performer brings out different aspects of these great works, not many are worth repeated listening. To my ears, this set stands out among the distinguished performances mainly in 2 ways: its elucidation of counterpoint and its fusion of the Historically-Informed Performance (HIP) practice with the expressive devices of the modern grand pianos. In fact, these 2 points are most closely related. The enumeration is merely for the convenience of exposition.

First, Andras Schiff's elucidation of the counterpoint is unrivaled, not even by harpsichordists with rigorous musicological background. The purists will chide me for allowing Bach's solo keyboard music be played on a modern piano. I love harpsichord recordings of these works too: from Wanda Landowska to Kenneth Gilbert, Davitt Moroney, and Robert Hill...., they have long inhabited my music shelves and musical life. Many of them are truly wonderful. However, on a good modern grand piano, Bach's n-part counterpoint can have n different tone colors, if played under masterful hands. In terms of this, Schiff is unsurpassed.

Another thing Schiff does superbly was his fusion of the grand piano's expressive devices with what he learned from the HIP movement. I haven't read elsewhere that Schiff has consciously studied HIP, but he must have. HIP harpsichordists have been (re)searching and exploring for decades the "affective ways" to play polyphonic music by subtle rubato, different articulation, varieties of touch, and rhythmical independence of the parts, partly to offset the lack of the expressive devices which are only available to the modern grand pianos: the broad range of dynamics and the infinite varieties of tone color shadings. What Schiff pioneered in these recordings is to fuse these two, and the result is simply mesmerizing.(*)

Other pianists and harpsichordists could be more profound, more insightful, more exciting, or more "historically accurate". However, to my ears, Schiff is still unrivaled on these 2 important fronts. (For a comparison, listen to any of Angela Hewitt's Bach solo "piano" works, e.g. the Well-Tempered Clavier.)

The price of the set is also right, although the readers are advised to look around for a better price from European vendors.

Very highly recommended.

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Purchase recommendation: While the price of the box is good, it is even better at Amazon's DE site with ASIN: B00000IP73 or ASIN: B001DTA8QS.

Update: I am very happy to discover, after writing this review, that Sergio Vartolo, a harpsichordist/organist/conductor, has very high esteem of Schiff's piano performance.

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(*) Here is a suggestion for the purists. Play Schiff's WTC at very low volume in the dead of the night. You might discover that it's not completely unlike the sound you are familiar with.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The German edition is much, much cheaper, December 2, 2011

By 

Octave - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bach: Solo Keyboard Works [Box Set] (Audio CD)

Just a note to emphasize how much cheaper this set can be had in its German edition (release date apparently Okt 2008). It has a white cover with a funny photo of Schiff in a fedora cocked at an arrogant angle: natty! (You can see this photo above as one of the alternative album cover shots, provided by Y.P., whose useful review is above.) I admit I have not carefully compared the contents, but at a glance the contents seem identical. I trawled back through 8 pages of results on Amazon US and did not see this set, but via Amazon UK you can get it new for approx ~US$31-39, including shipping. Just thought I would draw a bit more attention to this, as it could make a big difference for anyone, esp. those on a budget and/or addicts.

I personally love these recordings, but I'm also still too much of a neophyte to understand why they would be hated in some quarters, so I'll have to let this stand as a lowly product review.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars SBL-itis, November 21, 2011

By 

Bernard Michael O'Hanlon (Wilsons Prom, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bach: Solo Keyboard Works [Box Set] (Audio CD)

Boy did I hit the hard drugs and booze, the buckets of KFC and the women of easy virtue when this box came into my life. It was bender-central. At the time I thought it was a coincidence. Overnight I went from being a hard working corporate flunkey to a dero on the streets, mooching for spare coins or cheap love. Fleas befriended me. Many a night I slept under the railroad bridge because I did not want to return home. The days were spent in the park humming contrapuntal motifs from the Two Part Inventions as played primly by Andras Schiff. I wanted to marry someone called Anna. Come Sunday, I would prowl the city looking for any church called St Thomas'. Much to my alarm, I was being magnetically drawn to organ lofts. One day I lurched past an Italian restaurant where someone was serenading the patrons with excerpts from La Boheme - it razzed me up. Worst of all, one morning I woke up to discover that I had grown a bushy beard down to my wanger.

That moment was a revelation; the Hound of the Baskervilles could not have been any clearer: I was being transformed into an SBL (Smug Bach Lover).

I sought assistance immediately. The local church was running an SBL Self-Help group. I became its most enthusiastic participant. "To get you back on the tracks," my counsellor intoned, "we need to understand the train-wreck." I told him about the Schiff. He wiped his forehead in relief. "Well at least it is not Glenn Ghoul, sorry, Gould - he's entombed more people than Colonel Sanders. But why on earth did you go near Schiff? He is just so mesmerizingly boring. There's Kempff in the Goldberg; Richter in the Well Tempered Clavier; Hewitt in the rest. We are the sum total of our choices. You knowingly allowed Schiff into your life. What are you going to do about it?"

Resolutely I shaved off my beard and went cold-turkey on the KFC. I showered. Bedecked in HAZMAT suits, a special opps team from the SBL Self Help group raided my house and dealt summarily with the Schiff box - from what I understand, it put up a good fight but it was no match for the flame-thrower. To this day its whereabouts is unknown to me. With effort, I returned to normal life. I now hold down a job. My wife is speaking to me. Writing this review is part of my ongoing therapy. May this minatory tale be instructive.