We have detected that you are using an adblocking plugin in your browser.

The revenue we earn by the advertisements is used to manage this website. Please whitelist our website in your adblocking plugin.

Keyboard Thursday album review: A lush, seductive year in music, courtesy of J.S. Bach and pianist Angelika Nebel

By John Terauds on April 4, 2013

Klavierabend mit ANGELIKA NEBEL  BEI INA ÖNAL am 17.4.2011

Bach Metamorphosis is a wonderful new album out from the German Hänssler Classic label that features veteran German pianist Angelika Nebel in 14 piano transcriptions of pieces by J.S. Bach that loosely follow the liturgical year from Advent to Pentecost.

bachThe transcriptions come from a variety of pianists, composers and arrangers from the 19th century to the 21st. Each brings a little something different to the music. Nebel’s crowning touch is to present it with breathtaking poise and elegance.

There is a massive pile, most of it forgotten, of transcriptions of Bach’s original music for different instruments that originated with the Bach revival in the mid-19th century and included the explosion in the popularity of the piano.

Nebel has crafted a staggeringly sophisticated programme on this album that works on many different levels: There’s the thematic one, which loosely takes us through the church year; there’s the level of mood and narrative, which is nicely paced and layered; and then there’s the intellectual feat of making all sorts of cross-references between chorales, cantatas, oratorios and works for solo organ.

The music is so nicely played that one can ignore all of this background stuff and simply sit back and enjoy.

Nebel’s choice of transcriptions is, with one exception, as tasteful as her playing. She has largely steered clear of the thick chords and crashing bass octaves that we associate with late-19th/early-20th century transcriptions of Bach. Instead, we find colour and weight balanced neatly against light and air.

One nice surprise was the Canadian content: a luminous transcription of the Pastoral Symphony from the Christmas Oratorio by Brantford-born Clarence Lucas (1866-1947), who left an impression in Toronto and Montreal before decamping to New York City and the other side of the Atlantic.

Two other favourites from this disc is a Ralph Vaughan Williams transcription of the meditative “Ach bleib bei uns, Herr Jesus Christ,” that is far less turgid than Busoni’s and re-workings of the Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 536 by Walter Braunfels (1882-1954) that set the seductive tone as the album’s opening tracks.

The disc closes with one bit of over-the-topness: a big reworking dedicated to Nebel of the six-voice Ricercar from Musical Offering by young composer Wagner Stefani d’Aragonia Melheiro Prado (maybe, when you have a name like that, you feel you need to write big).

This is nearly an hour of pleasure — one that keeps on giving. Check out the details and audio samples here.

John Terauds

Share this article
lv_toronto_banner_high_590x300
comments powered by Disqus

FREE ARTS NEWS STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY MONDAY BY 6 AM

company logo

Part of

Terms of Service & Privacy Policy
© 2024 | Executive Producer Moses Znaimer