Bach: Art of the Fugue (2008)

by Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Die Kunst der Fuge: what a way to make your Deutsche Grammophon solo recording debut. That's especially true if you're Pierre-Laurent Aimard, whose full-time gig is with Pierre Boulez's Ensemble InterContemporain and whose reputation was made in the avant-garde and not the late Baroque. This casting against type works in Aimard's favor. The intellectual cast of Bach's Art of the Fugue is perfect for a pianist who can play György Ligeti's etudes, and one would expect Aimard to deliver a reading of rare lucidity and ... Read More

Die Kunst der Fuge: what a way to make your Deutsche Grammophon solo recording debut. That's especially true if you're Pierre-Laurent Aimard, whose full-time gig is with Pierre Boulez's Ensemble InterContemporain and whose reputation was made in the avant-garde and not the late Baroque. This casting against type works in Aimard's favor. The intellectual cast of Bach's Art of the Fugue is perfect for a pianist who can play György Ligeti's etudes, and one would expect Aimard to deliver a reading of rare lucidity and crystalline virtuosity. But that he delves so deeply beneath the work's dense counterpoint to articulate the expressive art concealed by the music's technical brilliance is a pleasant surprise. Aimard's performances have not only the rigor of logic and rhetoric, they have the compulsion of drama. Recorded in translucent digital sound in the Mozart-Saal of Vienna's Konzerthaus, this recording deserves a wide audience, despite its apparent mismatch between performer and music. ~ James Leonard,... Read Less