Represented by versions respectively for orchestra, chamber orchestra, saxophone quartet, two pianos, solo piano, harpsichord, two harpsichords, organ and string quartet, The Art of Fugue graces the current catalogue in many guises. That is something of a paradox given that the work may not even have been intended for public performance. The Keller Quartet’s highly recommendable new recording for ECM comes into direct competition with an earlier string quartet version by the Juilliard Quartet, another fine production, spread across two warmly recorded Sony CDs and with the chorale Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit added as a supplement – much as it was to the 1751 edition of the main work.
Comparisons are both instructive and rewarding in that while the Juilliard employ their full arsenal of expressive devices (pronounced vibrato being especially prominent), the Keller take their lead from the early-music specialists, sometimes virtually abandoning vibrato altogether and opting for an often seamless legato, less emphatic accents and a more blended pooled tone, with subtle bulges at the centre of the note. Their tempos are usually quicker, too, and they opt for a different playing order: Contrapuncti Nos. 1-13, then the four canons and ending with No. 14; whereas the Juilliard choose a sequence of Contrapuncti Nos. 1-11, followed by the four canons, then by Nos. 13, 12 and 14, with the chorale to close. Further contrast is occasioned by the Juilliard having commissioned (from Marten Cornellisen) a viola large enough to extend the instrument’s normal range down by a fourth, thereby fleshing out their tone even more.
Those wishing to make ‘quick-reference’ comparisons should try track 1 (where the quartets’ tonal credentials are stated more or less in full), then track 4 or track 6 (“in the French Style”) where the Keller suggest courtly elegance and the Juilliard recall the lustier, dare I say more old-fashioned interpretative manners of, say, Casals, Karl Richter or Sascha Schneider. Then again, comparing the two recordings in Contrapunctus No. 7 (track 7) reveals the Juilliard as having taken the livelier option
The Keller make great play with Bach’s ecstatically converging voices and offset the potentially monotonous effect of unrelieved D minor by maximizing the potential for contrast between individual movements. That their performance is on one disc is another distinct advantage, and while the Juilliard remain my personal favourite, the Keller are so different, and so profoundly alive to every nuance and nerve-end in the music, that I shall now want both. Neither version offers a completion of Bach’s last Contrapunctus. ECM’s recording is spacious yet never overly resonant.'