Johann Sebastian Bach: Das Wohltemperierte Klavier I

Till Fellner

Johann Sebastian Bach: Das Wohltemperierte Klavier I
Release date: 26.01.2004 ECM 1853/54
2-CD23,90 €add to cart
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In his ECM debut, the insightful Austrian pianist Till Fellner sheds new light on the best-known of Johann Sebastian Bach’s works for clavier, the endlessly inventive collection of preludes and fugues often considered one of the sublime monuments of Western music. Fellner shares some musical-temperamental affinities with former teacher Alfred Brendel, and has been praised by the press for his “insistence on putting musical sense and sensibility ahead of idle showmanship”: highly concentrated, very self-possessed, he gets at the heart of the material. “In his manner and his music-making he exudes calm and elegance.” – The New York Times

Featured Artists Recorded

September-October 2002, Jugendstiltheater, Wien

Original Release Date

26.01.2004

  • CD 1
  • Das wohltemperierte Klavier I
    (Johann Sebastian Bach)
  • 1Präludium C-Dur02:04
  • 2Fuge C-Dur01:53
  • 3Präludium c-moll01:18
  • 4Fuge c-moll01:59
  • 5Präludium Cis-Dur01:19
  • 6Fuge Cis-Dur02:21
  • 7Präludium cis-moll02:25
  • 8Fuge cis-moll04:10
  • 9Präludium D-Dur01:08
  • 10Fuge D-Dur01:48
  • 11Präludium d-moll01:40
  • 12Fuge d-moll02:26
  • 13Präludium Es-Dur03:18
  • 14Fuge Es-Dur01:46
  • 15Präludium es-moll03:48
  • 16Fuge dis/es-moll05:52
  • 17Präludium E-Dur01:18
  • 18Fuge E-Dur01:06
  • 19Präludium e-moll02:09
  • 20Fuge e-moll01:13
  • 21Präludium F-Dur00:52
  • 22Fuge F-Dur01:32
  • 23Präludium f-moll01:42
  • 24Fuge f-moll04:53
  • CD 2
  • 1Präludium Fis-Dur01:19
  • 2Fuge Fis-Dur02:04
  • 3Präludium fis-moll00:56
  • 4Fuge fis-moll04:08
  • 5Präludium G-Dur00:50
  • 6Fuge G-Dur02:32
  • 7Präludium g-moll02:27
  • 8Fuge g-moll02:23
  • 9Präludium As-Dur01:33
  • 10Fuge As-Dur02:07
  • 11Präludium gis-moll01:29
  • 12Fuge gis-moll03:47
  • 13Präludium A-Dur01:04
  • 14Fuge A-Dur02:16
  • 15Präludium a-moll00:59
  • 16Fuge a-moll05:20
  • 17Präludium B-Dur01:05
  • 18Fuge B-Dur01:43
  • 19Präludium b-moll03:09
  • 20Fuge b-moll03:32
  • 21Präludium H-Dur01:10
  • 22Fuge H-Dur02:45
  • 23Präludium h-moll05:44
  • 24Fuge h-moll06:14
Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, Bestenliste 2/2004
Stereophile, Recording of the month
Classic FM, Disc of the month
24 Heures, Coup de cœur
Stereoplay, Klangtipp
 
Mr. Fellner’s faithful and sensitive performance, with its soft-spoken quality, is especially satisfying.
Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times
 
Fellner’s powers of articulation and meticulously calibrated dynamic spectrum, each with its own range of shadings, underpin his firm grasp of the architecture of the individual pieces, while each is characterized by a clearly defined sonority that reflects the distinct tonal properties of the keys through which the cycle proceeds. … Fellner’s version is one of the most impressive accounts to have appeared in recent years, its lucidity, poetic impulse and absence of didacticism illuminating the truth of Goethe’s description of the music: “… as if the harmony of the ages were communing with itself.”
Charles Hopkins, International Record Review
 
To those who listen to Bach casually, this new recording of the “Well-Tempered Clavier“, by Till Fellner, is sheer pleasure – its legato line clean, graceful, and intelligently colored, its sound picture warm, clear, and inviting. But to those who follow Bach performance, the recording also signifies larger things – such as a triumphant culmination of the past 20 years of Bach on piano. …
Fellner takes an essentially vocal approach. Just as a great singer such as Renée Fleming creates the illusion of a floating line, so does Fellner establish a sense of hovering sound, but one that takes on great specificity in characterizing Bach’s intricate counterpoint. Nothing so new about that, but rarely has this sort of sound been used to accommodate so much detail of articulation or range of emotion, especially in that least vocal of musical forms, the fugue. One feels as if one is peering into a microscope and witnessing the inner workings of some wondrous organism.
David Patrick Stearns, Stereophile
 
This young German’s recording on the piano of the first part of Bach’s great collection of 48 preludes and fugues contends with the likes of András Schiff and Angela Hewitt as well as the enigmatic Glenn Gould. Fellner’s readings are carefully considered. … The articulation and the shaping of line are always clean, with meticulous but subtle attention given to the underlining of fugue subjects. … There is just the right amount of flexibility in his shaping of phrase, and the sheer beauty of his sound helps lend the cerebral an enticing touch of the sensual.
Stephen Pettitt, Evening Standard
 
There is a natural, intellectual gravity to Till Fellner’s playing, but, as he shows on this new two-disc set of Book 1 of Bach’s Welltempered Clavier, he possesses a thoroughly musical sensibility as well. While preserving the structural rigour and rhythmic precision of the 24 preludes and fugues, he brings to them a range of enlivening tonal colour and dynamic shading. Boundaries are recognised, however. Fellner has the stylistic taste never to exaggerate a point or to wrench it out of context. …
This is Bach-playing of the first order, richly enjoyable for the way in which Fellner deploys the resources of the piano while respecting the music’s historical perspective.
Geoffrey Norris, Daily Telegraph
 
The opening of Till Fellner’s performance of the first book of Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier” suits the laidback ECM label. The notes of the C major Prelude trickle out softly and evenly, the repeated patterns encouraging contemplation. None of Glenn Gould’s staccato tricks here. Bach’s work, in origin an educational exercise, just sits there in splendour, inspiring and uplifting us through its own strength and beauty. …
This is a supremely sensitive account of Book One handsomely recorded and presented.
Geoff Brown, The Times
 
Einiges verbindet Till Fellner mit seinem Mentor Alfred Brendel: die erzählerische Artikulation, der geschmeidig „singende“ Ton, der Sinn für architektonische Proportionen, Klang- und Stimmenbeziehungen, die Werk- und Selbstkontrolle, das eher weiche, abgerundete Klangbild trotz weitgehend genutzter dynamischer Möglichkeiten des Konzertflügels und nicht zuletzt die Fähigkeit, sich zurückzunehmen, ohne die eigene Persönlichkeit zu verstecken. All dies zeichnet Fellners Einspielung des ersten Teils von Bachs „Wohltemperiertem Klavier“ aus. Doch verraten sich in seinem Spiel noch andere Anregungen als Teil seiner Biographie. So hat er Beziehungen zu Passionen, Kantaten, Orgel- und Orchestermusik Bachs entdeckt und in Artikulation und Klangdisposition fruchtbar gemacht. Auch die neue Musik, die Fellner in seinen Konzertprogrammen gerne mit Bach kombiniert, ist in seine Deutung eingegangen … Trotz aller kunstfertigen, ja brillanten Vielfalt des Charakterisierens klingt Fellners Bach in jedem Augenblick unangestrengt-natürlich, wie gewachsen.
Ellen Kohlhaas, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
 
Fellners Bachspiel ist beglückend klar, über weite Strecken pedalfrei, und vor allem in den Fugen von größter polyphoner Durchsichtigkeit. ... Fellners Phrasierung ist delikat, er setzt die Töne haarfein aneinander, immer nur durch einen winzigen Lufthauch voneinander abgegrenzt. Er führt die einzelnen Stimmen souverän zueinander hin und wieder voneinander weg. Ein schlanker, filigraner Bach.
Christoph Vratz, WDR 3 Hörzeichen
 
Till Fellner … tritt dieser Musik weder als Virtuose noch als Wissenschaftler entgegen, sondern mit dem Ernst eines neugierigen, aufmerksamen und mit besonderem Einfühlungsvermögen begnadeten Lesers. … Unangestrengt, wie mühelos erworben, aber auch unendlich präzise, leise singend, zuweilen sogar schwingend wirkt diese Interpretation. … Die Transparenz ist das privilegierte Mittel dieses Bekenntnisses zur Zeitlosigkeit. Denn je tiefer die Strukturen erkennbar werden, je deutlicher der Kontrapunkt, je erkennbarer das Spiel der Stimmen wird, je feiner die Korrespondenzen im Detail, desto inniger scheint die Kunst dieses Interpreten in die Musik selbst einzugehen, alles Werden und Gewordensein abzulegen und einfach nur da zu sein, als Aufhebung von Zeit und Verzauberung der Seele.
Thomas Steinfeld, Süddeutsche Zeitung
 
Till Fellner ist eine starke Persönlichkeit und hat sich dieses europäische Klangdenkmal ohne spürbaren Ballast der Tradition wirklich neu angeeignet. Seine Interpretation ist von einer Empathie für die Ordnung in Bachs Mikrokosmos gelenkt. Wobei Till Fellner offenbar den gesamten Zyklus verinnerlicht hat. Wie ein Marionettenspieler, der alle Fäden hält und weiß, wann er welche ziehen muss, spiegelt sich in seiner Aufnahme eine Dialektik von Augenblick und Ganzem und umgekehrt. Sein Sinn für die Proportionen des Zyklus zeigt sich deshalb in vorausahnendem Spiel, wobei er maßgerecht und mit differenziertem Stilbewusstsein die Präludien und Fugen sukzessive als System zusammenfügt. Und zwar mit „natürlich“ leichtem Anschlag, der dem Puls der Komposition intuitiv folgt. Sozusagen im transzendenten Vertrauen zu Bach gestaltet Till Fellner das „Wohltemperierte Klavier“ als geistige Entdeckungsfahrt.
Hans-Peter Grünefeld, Musik & Theater
 
 
 
In his ECM New Series debut, the insightful Austrian pianist Till Fellner sheds new light on the best-known of Johann Sebastian Bach’s works for clavier, the endlessly inventive collection of preludes and fugues often considered one of the sublime monuments of Western music. This is the music of which Goethe wrote, “It was as if the harmony of the ages were communing with itself, as it may have happened in God's bosom shortly before the creation of the world. So was I, too, moved in my inmost being… ."

“The Well-Tempered Clavier” has of course become one of the most frequently-played of Bach’s compositions and a work to which every classical pianist of distinction feels obliged to bring his or her interpretative perspective – particularly since Glenn Gould’s heyday. Hearing Till Fellner play Book One of “Das wohltemperierte Klavier” at the Salzburg Festival in 2000, ECM producer Manfred Eicher was struck by the selfless manner in which Till Fellner attempted to do the opposite. His focussed and intelligent phrasing eschewed all hint of mannerism: his technique was prodigious, but he was not inflicting anything extraneous upon the work, in fact he was resolute about keeping his own personality at bay while serving Bach’s.

Reviewing the same concert in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Martin Meyer reached similar conclusions: “Till Fellner did not seek to imitate role models. He wanted to steer his own course and it led him to the art of balance. Which means: he sat down at the grand piano and started – one is tempted to say: simply – listening to the music… Thus Fellner knew how to spread out, generously, the diversity of events, in details as well as in the progressive complexity of the entire work…For a performer to come along who refuses to present himself as the unconcerned agent of his own volition but instead reviews his possibilities, develops his skills and proves them with pieces that at any rate reject superficial brilliance, should suit us fine. Till Fellner is on his way.”

In the interim, press reviews have often singled out the lucidity of Fellner’s performances and his “insistence on putting musical sense and sensibility ahead of idle showmanship” (The Observer): this is the constant factor in all of his work, whether playing classical music or contemporary composition – he gets at the heart of the material. And as the New York Times has said, “In his manner and his music-making he exudes calm and elegance.”

In his concert performances in the 2003-04 season, Till Fellner is playing the second book of J. S. Bach’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier”, in a concert cycle where it is variously combined and contrasted with works by Kurtág, Ligeti, Messiaen, Franck, Brahms, and Liszt. The complete cycle will be presented in Vienna, London, Vevey and Deutschlandsberg, and Fellner will also present parts of the cycle in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Milan, Lyon, Avignon, Munich, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Valencia, Washington, Vancouver and elsewhere…

The live Bach cycle performances are already picking up glowing reviews:

“Perhaps the most satisfying concert this month was at the Wigmore Hall, where Till Fellner gave the first recital in his Well-Tempered Clavier series,” wrote Stephen Everson in British magazine Prospect. “In this first concert he set the Bach against Brahms’s Handel Variations and a selection from Kurtág’s Játékok. A pupil of Brendel, and just into his thirties, Fellner has a sound that is rich yet clearly articulated, as well as a tremendous sense of musical architecture, served by a rigorous control of dynamics. In the Bach he found a different sonority to suit each piece, and shaped each voice within it. It is difficult to imagine a more persuasive reading of the Kurtág, in which Fellner found both wit and poignancy and his Brahms too was witty, as well as grand and delicate by turns. If the recording industry were not so derelict, he would by now have produced a series of major recordings – although, to their credit, ECM are to release the first book of the Bach in the New Year…”

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