Customer Reviews

Well Tempered Clavier, Part 1

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I own a few really outstanding recordings of this: among them richter, wanda landowska, friedrich gulda, gould. This is now my favorite. It may actually be more expressive and nuanced than all of the above (with the exception of gulda), while being less mannered. You can hear everything; the clavichord makes it all transparent. This is an incandescent recording.

I've waited a long time to find the first half of Kirkpatrick's Clavichord performance of J. S. Bach's "The Well-Tempered Clavier"; it was surely well worth waiting. Kirkpatrick offers lively, emotionally stirring performances on the clavichord, opening with the familiar bars of the "Ave Maria" in the first brief piece. I concur with a previous reviewer who remaked that this is an incandescent recording. I think it is now my favorite keyboard performance of Bach's music, easily surpassing any I've heard from the likes of Gould or Perahia. The sound quality is exceptional for these vintage recordings, some of which are over forty years old.

Kirkpatrick's performance stands apart from all the rest. I owned Archiv 33 1/3 copies of Teil 1 & 2 when at university, and his virtuosity helped me through many a tense night. I survived, but the vinyl eventually failed.

The unique sound of the Clavichord (clavier refers generally to all keyboard instruments) presents challenges in presentation which Ralph Kirkpatrick easily masters to create an unparalled sound experience. Bach would be proud.

For those who prefer harpsichord music on a contemporary (to the writing of the music) style instrument (in this case clavichord) vice a piano, this is a "must have" album. Mr Kirkpatrick plays extremely well, and with feeling. Unlike the many pianists who play Bach either in a romantic fashion or the "cold, mathematic school," he plays this portion of the Anna Magdalena Notebook as though he could father over twenty children. I would definitely recommend this recording to those who love Bach. The only recordings I believe can stand comparison are those of his teacher, Wanda Landowska, and the hard to find Helmut Walcha recordings. If one can find the Kirkpatrick recording on the harpsichord, it also is well worth listening to. Also, the engineering on the original LP's were state of the art for Archiv of the day and the remastering is flawless.

The quality of the performance is FANTASTIC, nothing short of brilliant. I have two beefs with this disc though: first, Kirkpatrick chose to record on a clavichord, an instrument used in the baroque era for practice, due to it's inexpensiveness. It's basically just a really cheap-sounding harpsichord. If only this had been recorded on a piano or harpsichord...My other frustration is with the recording quality, but that's only because this was recorded 40 years ago--nothing can be done about that. But still, it should prevent you from purchasing this item. I would only buy this if you have another, better quality recording of the WTC, and are interested in how else it might be interpreted.

My vinyl copy of Ralph Kirkpatrick has a picture of him playing a small keyboard instrument (Klavier?) in a period drawing room, but is in fact all of Book 1 (on 2 vinyl 12" discs) on HARPSICHORD - a beautiful, rich, wooden harpsichord at that.

In listening to the samples of this CD, it sounds a lot slower, and tinny, as if played on a aluminium-frame harpsichord - something that Dr Kirkpatrick was not in favour of from my reading.

I wrote to Deutsche-Grammophon about them possibly re-releasing the harpsichord recordings of Dr Kirkpatrick playing Das Wohltemperierte Klavier that I have on vinyl (bit scratchy now), but they said, "As we have them for sale on Klavier, we won't be re-issuing the harpsichord recordings." That's a shame, because the Clavier/Klavier sounds even worse than the tinny recordings here - it sounds like some cheap early-model Casio "Clavier" setting.

Ah well, I'll keep searching and see if Amazon has Gustav Leonhardt or Virginia Black, or Ursula Duetschler on harpsichord. (I've owned the RCA 1950s Wanda Landowska recordings and they're almost as tinny as these.)