Was the Art of Fugue meant to be performed? Quite a few authoritative persons have argued that it wasn't: that Bach's main purposes were instruction in contrapuntal techniques and, more privately, a highly sophisticated form of problem solving. And what about the listener? A sequence of fugues and canons, well over an hour in duration, all in D minor, all based on the same motif—it may be blasphemy to say so, but for many that's more like an endurance test than a concert. After that the Goldberg Variations with all the repeats is easy listening.
But in a good performance, any suggestion that this score wasn't actually meant to be heard seems incredible. There's so much more here than ingenious eye-music—as this new recording shows in page after page. Take the momentarily airborne semiquaver runs over dancing left-hand figures towards the end of Contrapunctus XIII—pure fantasy! In Nikolaieva's hands the dislocating harmonic changes at the heart of IV are almost voluptuous. And her feeling for singing polyphony is remarkable—at times this is more like a chamber choir than a keyboard. The recording catches all this beautifully—intimate, but not too close, with just enough atmosphere.
So is the success unqualified? By no means. I'm surprised to find Nikolaieva sometimes undermining her subtler inspirations by the old device of turning the spotlight full on the fugue subject. A stately, beautifully voiced crescendo in the closing stages of III is to my ears violently deflated by the over-emphatic statement in the tenor (track 9, 2'11''). Nor do I like the very sharp pointing of phrase-ends in the subject of XI.
And yet I think I could have overlooked this—and more—happily, if it hadn't been for her astonishing attack of almost Victorian parlour religiosity in the final, unfinished Contrapunctus XIV. At first I found it difficult to believe this was the same player—crude octave doublings in the bass, quasi-pizzicato effects (2'35'' et seq.) and above all the awestruck, heavy tempo. A gradual accelerando (from 6'45'') ups the pulse just in time for the second exposition, but even then it's far from natural. It's an effort to harmonize this with the inspired dignity of her Contrapunctus IV—or virtually the whole of her Gramophone Award-winning Shostakovich 24 Preludes and Fugues (also Hyperion). Nothing in the Ricercars or the Duets gives a hint of it either. I shall return to this set, I'm sure, for insight into individual movements but as a complete experience … It's too flawed for that.'