A collector’s item for piano enthusiasts.
“Bach Nostalghia,” performed by Francesco Piemontesi, is The Sunday Times’ Recording of The Week! Read the full review below!
The modern piano has somehow avoided banishment as a vehicle for Bach’s keyboard works, despite the march of “period practice”. Pure Bach on the instrument has won new admirers thanks to players such as Angela Hewitt and Andras Schiff. Francesco Piemontesi, a young Swiss pianist, joins their ranks, but this album puts Bach’s Italian Concerto at the centre of a programme featuring one of his most celebrated arrangers, Ferruccio Busoni. The Prelude in E flat and the Fugue in the same key frame the album, which offers arrangements from cantata movements including Wachet auf (Sleepers, Wake). Piemontesi makes light work of Busoni’s Bach-inspired Toccata and makes a point of contrasting the sonorities of the transcriptions — one by the great German pianist Wilhelm Kempff — with the transparency and staccato of “original” Bach. A collector’s item for piano enthusiasts.
Hugh Canning
