Bach/Shostakovich Preludes & Fugues
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Dmitri Shostakovich, Johann Sebastian Bach
Label: Red Seal
Magazine Review Date: 3/1999
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 111
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 74321 61446-2
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| (Das) Wohltemperierte Klavier, '(The) Well-Tempered Clavier, Movement: C, BWV846 |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (Das) Wohltemperierte Klavier, '(The) Well-Tempered Clavier, Movement: D, BWV850 |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (Das) Wohltemperierte Klavier, '(The) Well-Tempered Clavier, Movement: D minor, BWV851 |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (Das) Wohltemperierte Klavier, '(The) Well-Tempered Clavier, Movement: E flat, BWV852 |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (Das) Wohltemperierte Klavier, '(The) Well-Tempered Clavier, Movement: F, BWV856 |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (Das) Wohltemperierte Klavier, '(The) Well-Tempered Clavier, Movement: F minor, BWV857 |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (Das) Wohltemperierte Klavier, '(The) Well-Tempered Clavier, Movement: F sharp, BWV858 |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (Das) Wohltemperierte Klavier, '(The) Well-Tempered Clavier, Movement: A flat, BWV862 |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (Das) Wohltemperierte Klavier, '(The) Well-Tempered Clavier, Movement: G sharp minor, BWV863 |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (Das) Wohltemperierte Klavier, '(The) Well-Tempered Clavier, Movement: A, BWV864 |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (Das) Wohltemperierte Klavier, '(The) Well-Tempered Clavier, Movement: B, BWV868 |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (Das) Wohltemperierte Klavier, '(The) Well-Tempered Clavier, Movement: B minor, BWV869 |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (24) Preludes and Fugues, Movement: No. 2 in A minor |
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (24) Preludes and Fugues, Movement: No. 3 in G |
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (24) Preludes and Fugues, Movement: No. 4 in E minor |
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (24) Preludes and Fugues, Movement: No. 8 in F sharp minor |
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (24) Preludes and Fugues, Movement: No. 9 in E |
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (24) Preludes and Fugues, Movement: No. 10 in C sharp minor |
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (24) Preludes and Fugues, Movement: No. 12 in G sharp minor |
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (24) Preludes and Fugues, Movement: No. 14 in E flat minor |
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (24) Preludes and Fugues, Movement: No. 15 in D flat |
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (24) Preludes and Fugues, Movement: No. 16 in B flat minor |
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (24) Preludes and Fugues, Movement: No. 20 in C minor |
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
| (24) Preludes and Fugues, Movement: No. 21 in B flat |
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer Olli Mustonen, Piano |
Author:
Olli Mustonen here confirms his reputation as a restlessly creative and technically brilliant pianist. His 1990 Shostakovich and Alkan debut recording for Decca already showed those qualities in a good light, earning him a Gramophone Award. Now he has persuaded RCA to let him interweave half of the first book of Bach’s 48 with half of Shostakovich’s Op. 87 Preludes and Fugues, keeping Bach’s chromatically rising order of keys intact (Shostakovich’s original ordering followed the circle-of-fifths arrangement patented by Chopin’s Op. 28 Preludes).
By adopting fundamentally the same performance manner for both composers Mustonen presumably hopes to reinforce the already strong affinities between the cycles, and there’s certainly never any doubt that he possesses the exceptional gifts to make the whole project work. More controversial is the actual manner involved. By nature Mustonen is a sparky, capricious musician who delights in teasing and subverting. There are instances where this works superbly well, especially in Shostakovich. The F sharp minor Prelude, for instance, is wonderfully elfin, and the occasional nervous tics in the Fugue don’t disturb its fundamental seriousness. Nor do I remember ever hearing the G minor Prelude so interestingly pedalled and voiced or the A minor so flawlessly articulate.
The trouble with applying this kind of intellectual twitchiness to Bach is that it inevitably sounds like son-of-Glenn-Gould. Mustonen’s sewing-machine-style fluency in the figuration-based preludes is certainly in modo Gouldiano, and it’s easy to imagine both men’s joy when their eyes alighted on the staccatissimo markings in the D minor Fugue; Mustonen certainly needs no sanction from the score to indulge in similar touches whenever the mood takes him. As with Gould there is method in Mustonen’s madness, and though I can’t imagine ever warming to his habitual rhythmic nudgings and pecked staccatos, they are at least consistently applied and disciplined by an exceptional ear for contrapuntal clarity.
What I do miss, in Mustonen’s Shostakovich as much as his Bach, is any sense of spiritual peace or cumulative architectural strength. Too often the stature of the fugues is reduced by a whimsicality that borders on perversity – hear the Shostakovich E major, for instance, with its systematically de-emphasized long notes and upgraded short ones. Shostakovich’s indications of legato and legatissimo are habitually reversed to a neo-classical Stravinskian detache. It’s true that Mustonen’s Helsinki is just over the Gulf of Finland from the young Shostakovich’s Petrograd/Leningrad, but in the Preludes and Fugues it’s no longer the brattish young Shostakovich speaking, and to superimpose the earlier manner on to the later is to risk turning legitimate characterization into mere caricature.
Mustonen’s tone production is itself as idiosyncratic as his phrasing: instead of expanding naturally, his fortissimo feels as though squeezed through a narrow tube. All the same, I’m bound to concede that, as with the rest of his manner, this is part and parcel of a boldly distinctive interpretative voice, to which RCA’s full-bodied, truthful recording does full justice.'
By adopting fundamentally the same performance manner for both composers Mustonen presumably hopes to reinforce the already strong affinities between the cycles, and there’s certainly never any doubt that he possesses the exceptional gifts to make the whole project work. More controversial is the actual manner involved. By nature Mustonen is a sparky, capricious musician who delights in teasing and subverting. There are instances where this works superbly well, especially in Shostakovich. The F sharp minor Prelude, for instance, is wonderfully elfin, and the occasional nervous tics in the Fugue don’t disturb its fundamental seriousness. Nor do I remember ever hearing the G minor Prelude so interestingly pedalled and voiced or the A minor so flawlessly articulate.
The trouble with applying this kind of intellectual twitchiness to Bach is that it inevitably sounds like son-of-Glenn-Gould. Mustonen’s sewing-machine-style fluency in the figuration-based preludes is certainly in modo Gouldiano, and it’s easy to imagine both men’s joy when their eyes alighted on the staccatissimo markings in the D minor Fugue; Mustonen certainly needs no sanction from the score to indulge in similar touches whenever the mood takes him. As with Gould there is method in Mustonen’s madness, and though I can’t imagine ever warming to his habitual rhythmic nudgings and pecked staccatos, they are at least consistently applied and disciplined by an exceptional ear for contrapuntal clarity.
What I do miss, in Mustonen’s Shostakovich as much as his Bach, is any sense of spiritual peace or cumulative architectural strength. Too often the stature of the fugues is reduced by a whimsicality that borders on perversity – hear the Shostakovich E major, for instance, with its systematically de-emphasized long notes and upgraded short ones. Shostakovich’s indications of legato and legatissimo are habitually reversed to a neo-classical Stravinskian detache. It’s true that Mustonen’s Helsinki is just over the Gulf of Finland from the young Shostakovich’s Petrograd/Leningrad, but in the Preludes and Fugues it’s no longer the brattish young Shostakovich speaking, and to superimpose the earlier manner on to the later is to risk turning legitimate characterization into mere caricature.
Mustonen’s tone production is itself as idiosyncratic as his phrasing: instead of expanding naturally, his fortissimo feels as though squeezed through a narrow tube. All the same, I’m bound to concede that, as with the rest of his manner, this is part and parcel of a boldly distinctive interpretative voice, to which RCA’s full-bodied, truthful recording does full justice.'
Bach/Shostakovich Preludes & Fugues
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