Re: GG: Die Kunst der Fuge (revisited)

[Karl Berry <karl@cs.umb.edu>]

    > > And most important: Could someone  pleasse reccommend a "reference
    > > recording" of KdF? (heard a few good things about the Keller Quartett)

If you're looking for a piano version, my personal overall favorite of
all the complete versions is Evgeny Koriolov, he being somewhat Gould-like.

Charles Rosen's recording has a much different feeling to it, and I
actually prefer his in some of the slower pieces (#5 comes to mind).
Bradley likes this one :).

Joanna Macgregor's recording is nice, but sounds kind of washed out to
me compared to Koriolov.  Still, I like her #10 best.

The Canadian Brass version is quite nice, and the introduction discusses
GG, but I find it difficult to listen to the whole thing done on brass,
it all starts sounding the same to me, and more brass than fugue, if you
know what I mean.

I have one fugue (#2, I think) done on woodwinds.  That sounds pretty
nice, but I think the whole thing would suffer from the same problem as
the brass.

I've heard the Julliard quartet version, I was underwhelmed.

The actual tape I listen to has all of the ones GG recorded (BTW, he did
#6 for a tv show on the harpsipiano; I wish they'd release that :) plus
fill-ins from the others.

It's a real shame he never did a real recording on piano.  Seems like he
would have especially had fun with the two-keyboard versions of Cp.13,
where he'd get to record with himself.  (Almost all of the above
recordings do this, and it's great.)

Hope this helps.