Customer Reviews

J.S. Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II

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3 star:		(1)
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Barenboim's playing is probably not as horrible as the first reviewer suggests. However, Mr. Barenboim's interpretation just sounds directionless and lacking drama to my ears. Listening to these discs feels like one disappointment after another. I must agree that these disc should be avoided.

I cannot beleive what reviewers are saying about this most accomplished of performers. People who have no taste, no knowledge and no practice of classical music should just stick around their pop tunes and abstain to write about Barenboim. This pianist brings his long, varied and acclaimed career as a director and a pianist to a climax with this playing of Bach. Gould was great but there was still something mechanical in his performance. Now we have each prelude and fugue set in its texture, its color, its appropriate rythm and atmosphere. It is all done with gusto, unparalleled knowledge of the last 500 years of music and extreme delicacy. After Fisher, Richter, Gould, Schiff and everybody else, this is a turning point.

I could barely force myself to listen to the whole set because Barenboim's touch is harsh and overbearing, he pedals too much and much passage work is muddy, and his approach is willful and anachronistic. I don't mind pianistic, even quasi-Romantic Bach (admiration for Edwin Fischer and Sviatoslav Richter comes to mind) but this is as if he were playing on the piano analog of a Tyrannosaurus rex. Scary. And it takes three CDs, for goodness sake! Unless you're a huge fan of Barenboim in his piano-playing incarnation, avoid this one.