All manner of means have been assembled to realize this magnum opus of Bach’s final years, although recorded history tells us, reassuringly, that the forces employed are less intrinsic to the interpretative aims than we might imagine. That said, I sometimes question whether any non-keyboard version of the Contrapuncti (the mirror fugues are arguably too idiomatic) can attain the necessary intensity and focus of characterization without employing a single family of instruments; indeed, once the four-part texture is cloaked in stylistic surface finery, the Art of Fugue’s innate structure, born of a compelling and often alarmingly penetrative interaction between parts, can sink and the expressive power of the pure line be left to languish in an abstract no man’s land. Such a preface concludes a year in which both the Keller Quartet and Phantasm have received plaudits for getting to the heart of the Art of Fugue in just such a way. Both those versions, incidentally (a string and viol quartet respectively), pronounce from quite different perspectives in ways which seriously question preconceptions on what approach to expect from either medium.
Alessandrini clearly sees the work as ‘music to listen to’, and as those who know his extensive work in earlier Italian genres will be aware, he has a supreme knack for expressive immediacy in his performances. It is this spirit which pervades this galant scoring of the work, in which he aspires to a sound world akin to that of the Musical Offering. Even so, Alessandrini clearly feels the weight of history on his shoulders, paying homage in his note to the theoretical mystique of the work before – phew! – recognizing almost apologetically that ‘the synthesis of the profoundly rational and the ineffable and unmeasurable is faultless’. In practice, Concerto Italiano’s account is vitally conceived, finely sculpted and is often propelled by a rhythmic lift which dissipates statutory reverence in the first Contrapunctus, gives the third an unsuspected jazziness and infuses the great hurricane of the ninth with brilliantly wind-swept roulades.
Where instrumentation and conception result in a disappointingly limited musical argument, Bach’s imagination takes off and he deliberately sends a once ‘safe’ idea into the danger zone; this is where interpretation begins and colourful representation ends. No. 8, so prescient of things to come, is sadly rattled off with little sense of any underlying drama. As for the almost psychotic Angst of No. 11, Alessandrini appears in a state of denial in a completely misjudged affair. This is not Vivaldi! There is, however, a wonderful nobility to Contrapunctus No. 6, in Stylo Francese with less of the filigree of recent performances but something equally compelling, and there is also a glorious mixture of bittersweet flavours in No. 12. Indeed, many of the movements are originally conceived, and the scoring is often entrancing, but Alessandrini too rarely recognizes Bach’s most far-reaching emotional statements. Too often the roots appear at the surface.'