EMI Great Recordings of the Century: 3919582
J S Bach - The Well-Tempered Clavier
Normally: £24.44 NOW: £17.57 (£15.28 ex VAT) special offer ending 26/02/2009
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 3
Genre: Instrumental
Artist(s): Edwin Fischer (piano)
Release Date: 6th September 2007
More Details on J S Bach - The Well-Tempered Clavier
Great Recordings of the Century: ‘A distinguished series of beautifully presented reissues.’ (Gramophone)
‘EMI’s Great Recordings of the Century is exactly what it says: these classic interpretations warrant a place in everybody’s collection.’ (The Times)
The EMI Classics flagship mid-price series of reissues Great Recordings of the Century has proved exceptionally successful since its launch in 1998. The series has a high-quality and distinctive through-design, with original LP sleeves and the ART logo reproduced on the front covers and critical endorsements from the Gramophone on the back inlays. The substantial booklets offer newly commissioned and authoritative essays (in English, German & French) and, where appropriate, the sung texts/libretto (with translations).
A crucial element in maintaining the high standards achieved in Great Recordings of the Century is the work of EMI’s renowned team of engineers at Abbey Road Studios. Using the very latest technology, they make new transfers from the original materials (78s and analogue tape) and new remasterings (of both analogue and digital recordings).
While Menuhin was recording Bach in Paris, the Swiss pianist and conductor Edwin Fischer was making the first complete recording of the ‘48’ in London, in 1933–36.
Stephen Plaistow’s notes place Fischer among the more philosophical and individual pianists of the early 20th century, and cite his pupil Alfred Brendel’s description of his playing as ‘untamed, even at its most decorous’. That characteristic lends this huge project to record so many short pieces its edge and a wide rhetorical range – allied of course with Fischer’s famed beauty of tone and control of nuance.
As with the Menuhin disc, this new state-of-the art remastering by Abbey Road 78 expert Andrew Walter improves greatly on the recording’s previous appearance on Références.
