Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

i may be wrong, but i blame glenn gould with mucking up the bach playing tradition with ego and stunts ... the humming and singing along, really ... and with few exceptions (schiff for one) it seems the bach playing ever since has tried to be "vivid" -- showy, or blindingly fast, or dynamically contrasty, heck there are so many notes! but richter comes at these pieces in the russian tradition, which is to say the middle european kapelmeister tradition. to my jaded modern ears it's a delightful revelation. though some preludes are played quite fast, richter's tempos seem slightly on the slow side (by modern standards). but he is still able to link the voices together in continuous song across all registers. there is a remarkable quality of meditation and intense participation in these performances. the fugues are given an individual character, and unfold without mechanical repetition: the recurring themes are inflected differently as they reappear in different voices. the prelude textures are always clean and fluent. many of the interpretations seemed to me completely fresh. the famous C prelude from book 1, for example, can sometimes sound like a merry sewing machine or a happy milkmaid's guitar, but richter makes it seem to float to our ears from far away, soft and weightless -- an unexpectedly poignant effect. the pieces were recorded in 1970-73 on a boesendorfer piano, which sounds somewhat tubby in the acoustics of the room, but richter gets an excellent aural range through variations in touch and very sparing use of pedal. the acoustics never detract from the presence of the music or richter's remarkable playing. strongly recommended.