Art of Fugue

Hewitt knows the Bach solo piano music as well as anyone. She's renowned for her teaching and her playing. This Art of Fugue is lucid, accessible, beautifully recorded, and beautifully played. The music is simultaneously complex and simple; just follow her advice and listen for the several voices that fugue contains.There's a smooth quality in her work, a flowing stream of clear notes. She's made Bach more available and more beautiful. Brava.

I am an amateur pianist who has concentrated on the keyboard works of JS Bach for the last twenty years. In spite of being an excellent sight reader there has always been something very intimidating about playing The Art of Fugue. The sheer intellectual density of the material is not for the faint hearted. Correct finger positions are challenging and absolutely necessary to approach the singing tone required to make AOF come alive. This is fugue development explored in every possible way with multiple voices combined in single, double, triple, and a potential quadruple fugue (BWV 1080/19) left unfinished on Bach's death bed. These fugue voices are combined straight up, backwards, upside down, in contrary motion, canon form, augmented and diminished.I have been a huge admirer of Angela Hewitt's interpretation of Bach's keyboard works. Her Bach scholarship is superlative and this recording is a tour de force. I was fortunate enough to be at her recent performance of AOF in San Francisco which inspired me to tackle these again. But it took the release of this recording and the informative notes to help me to drill down to another layer of understanding. The satisfaction of listening to Angela Hewitt's performance of The Art of Fugue is approached only by playing them for yourself.

Master pianist Hewitt writes in the liner notes: “It was good to approach The Art of the Fugue with so many ears of Bach behind me. The Goldberg Variations and much of the Well-Tempered Clavier seem like child’s play in comparison. In The Art of the Fugue there are no Preludes for comic relief –just one fugal masterpiece after the other.” It’s hard to argue with that judgment. What strikes me on repeated listening is that, unlike my previous conception of this suite, they aren’t cold pieces at all. Rather, they are, at points, intensely lyrical, and human, and warm. It’s beautiful music and obviously deserves a hearing. Just put on the CDs and let the music soak in.

Thank you, Angela Hewitt! She is without doubt the best of the current Bach exponents. Beautiful playing, showing baroque regularity, yet with emotion that does not go too far. This is a worthy successor to her many excellent Bach recordings. I think she stands along with Perahia and Kempff, Brendel and Sviatoslav Richter, in her interpretations of Bach, although if you want a different view of Bach, try Gould.I hope she will tackle the excellent, more emotional works of the sons of Bach -- Carl Philip Emanuel, Johann Christoph Friedrich, Wilhelm Friedemann, and Johann Christian. They are sadly underrepresented even in the modern CD age!

An excellent finale to Ms. Hewitt's survey of Bach's major keyboard works. Her tone and texture amidst even the the most dense fingerwork comes through with clarity and precision. This music is very rich and concentrated and not the most ear-user friendly, all being in the same key. Yet there is variety in how Hewitt approaches the contrapuntal textures and a dance like quality in some of the passages. I also have the Emerson String Quartet's version of A of F as another alternative to this solo work. Played back to back both are satisfying experiences. Brava, Angela!

Listening to Angela Hewitt's majestic and masterful presentation of Bach's crowning work, the The Art of Fugue, we sense her long career in study and contemplation of the Kapellmeister's thoughts may be irreplaceable in surmounting this particular monument to the fugal art. No-one with an affinity for Bach's solo works can be without this recording at all.As a side note, is it me or is there an error on CD2, (2)"Contrapunctus 12 Rectus" and (3)"Contrapunctus 12 Inversus" appear to be reverse-named.

Wow. Turn the volume up, turn off the lights, and bask

This is very good. Hewitt is my favorite Bach keyboard artist. Though nobody knows what instrumentation Bach would have preferred for this work, Marriner's SACD (a quadraphonic recording) is my favorite. But I must add that there's nothing like an ultra talented woman (Hewitt) interpreting Bach.

I am a great fan of Angela Hewitt, truly the grand priestess of Bach currently - next to Sokolov, after the deaths of Tureck and Gould. Her CDs have a clarity, translucence of touch and gusto that is unparalleled. So with great anticipation I had purchased her version of the Art of the Fugue yesterday. The first, 10th and 14th (Bach's famous unfinished) Contrapunctus as well as the Canons are truly wonderful, of a lucidity comparable to her other works. However, two major disappointments stand out with regards to the rest. Generally , the sound of the recording is very muffled, particularly in the middle register where the second and third voices of the 4 voiced fugues are played. I do not know if it has to do with the Fazioli or with the particular recording, but it is annoying. So it is fairly nice to hear the deepest and highest voice, but it is almost impossible to hear clearly the middle ones and the complex chiasmata they perform around each other.This is a great shame and where one can hear them, there is quite a bit of accentuation that might follow the way how one would sing these voices (apparently part of her preparation for this performance), but it breaks the flow and true contrapunctus is very hard to listen to or discern in this version. The different voices of the same piece are different in character, some more solemn, others more cheerful and their interplay is to me one of the most exciting parts of Bach's last composition, they cause friction and achieve resolution in their contrast. I do think Gould failed it (when he tried to solve this by overdubbing) - and now Hewitt too. I read the music while listening and this overwhelming feeling that the complexity was not mastered - and maybe cannot be mastered with two hands alone - endured, and awaits another master's effort.Maybe it is easier for the mind of the listener to associate each voice with a different instrument and follow them thus. Thus, slightly unfairly, after listening to her performance several times, I resorted back to the Emerson String Quartet Version ( Bach, J.S.: The Art of Fugue - Emerson String Quartet by Emerson String Quartet (2003-08-05) ) and was back in Heaven! The complexity, the interplay between voices with different character and highly asynchronous developments in each, the continuous flow and emotional build-up in this performance is unparalleled. Some critics on this forum chided her for adding a chorale at the end that wasn't composed as part of this work. I think this criticism is unfair. Her action is well justifiable on musicological grounds as Hewitt explains in her line notes and also the path taken by Emerson, probably also partly to provide - after a while of silence after the incomplete 14th Contrapunctus - a degree of wholeness that was so essential to the Geometry of Bach's initial composition which was so cruelly interrupted by the composer's death. Bach, J.S.: The Art of Fugue - Emerson String Quartet by Emerson String Quartet (2003-08-05)

The playing on these two CDs is truly amazing. A clue as to why this is so is given in Angela Hewitt’s liner notes, where she talks about "the painstaking work [she] did during the learning process [that] involved singing each voice in turn and marking in the breathing points – which come at different times in the different voices”. The result is great clarity of the voices underlined with subtle variations of articulation – her Fazioli piano truly sings. I would mention the slight detached articulation she uses from time to time which has at the same time a perfect sense of legato line. Hewitt’s notes on the individual fugues are also very helpful to the listener: she manages to capture the essential characteristics of work, each in a short paragraph. The notes are best appreciated if you have access to a score, since bar numbers are mentioned. The recording is excellent: – I particular liked the acoustic, slightly resonant to give it life but not so much as to create any blurring of the counterpoint or of the piano sound. Lastly I would say that this recording of this great intellectual edifice also has places which touch the heart as well as the mind: I would in particular mention the opening fugue and the famous Contrapunctus 14, which she plays in its uncompleted form, as Bach left it.

All you might expect from this wonderful pianist over two discs. Was that really necessary; two discs? I am unhappy about the additional piece; of the view that The Art of Fugue's ending as interruption leaves interpretation and, indeed, feeling open to the listener. For these reasons I prefer the Pierre-Laurent Aimard recording. Maybe small minded of me but, so...

To review this superb disc as"OK" I feel is nothing short of an insult.Widely and rightly regarded as the most highly regarded Bach pianist of our time, Angela Hewitt playing the Art of Fugue could be seen as one of the highest peaks in a long range of achievement. I understandably had very high expectations of this recording...... I was not disappointed.This playing of the very highest artistry of music which stands at the zenith of composition.Art of Fugue comes in many shapes and sizes - l find this performance on a modern piano profoundly satisfying. The control a pianist, or rather this pianist has over dymamics is of crucial importance in this work above all others and allows entries to be dovetailed in with a clarity difficult to deliver on a harpsichord . This an utterly captivating performance exquisitely played.But of course you will need others .....you can not own just one Art of fugue...

No quibble with a very fine performance.However the two discs face to face proved immovable using all usual methods and flexing the CD's in a very unkind way. The clear plastic was very very rigid. I had to resort to nibbling the central hub to little bits with a small pair of diagonal side cutters.CD's now re-homed and happy!