Catalogue Connection: 25097

I think this is a compelling – absolutely compelling – performance. Like an experienced teacher guiding one to see previously unnoticed ideas and details, or symmetries and asymmetries in a complex piece of architecture, Diana Boyle helps the listener understand intellectually and feel emotionally the intense life within one of Bach’s most thoughtful and astringent pieces of writing. And she makes that astringency feel positively rich, with her wide range of (yes – sometimes idiosyncratic, but always revealing) dynamics. The key to understanding this performance, I think, lies in her own words (see cover notes) that she had the violin often in mind whilst performing this work. Bach, after all, never stipulated which instrument he was composing this for.

This is musical architecture at its highest: and Ms. Boyle reads it very personally and with profound feeling and sincerity, while at the same time faithfully conserving the music’s universal quality. This is not the “definitive performance”: heaven preserve that such a thing should exist. But it is one of the most exciting and technically excellent interpretations I know. I am grateful for Ms. Boyle’s ability to illuminate the music, and would recommend these discs to anyone wanting to be introduced to a new exploration of the musical cathedrals which Bach created.

This riveting, intelligently thought-through reading by the talented Diana Boyle includes the fourteen Contrapuncti and the Inversus sections of Contrapuncti 12 and 13, but not the optional Canons. Lovers of Bach’s keyboard music will find it competitive.

The seemingly endless march of Die Kunst der Fuges, like the similarly endless march of Well-Tempered Claviers and Beethoven sonata cycles, continues apace with this release from Divine Art, which is in turn a redistribution of a disc originally issued as Elective Solitude (no disc number) in 2009. Unlike harpsichordist Fabio Bonizzoni, whose performance on Glossa 31510 is my personal choice, Boyle chooses much slower tempos (Bonizzoni’s performance fits onto one CD and is only 63:32 long) and omits all of the four canons. Apparently, the inclusion of the canons is considered optional, since Bonizzoni only includes two of them.

Whereas Bonizzoni dances through the music with an Italianate lilt, Boyle, a pupil of Artur Balsam, plays them in a slow, lyrical manner closer in feeling to the French Impressionists. Indeed, she even refers to one of the melodies in Contrapunctus 7 as a reminder of “a flute playing Debussy” (although other moments remind her of Brahms or even Wagner). The recording was apparently made in a room with a lot of reverberant space, so although the microphone placement is fairly close the sound of Boyle’s piano is warm and just a shade indistinct, which suits her genial, relaxed approach. She uses quite a bit of dynamic changes but only a little and quite judicious pedal. Overall, her performances have a relaxing, hypnotic, almost Zen feeling about them, much like the late Rosalyn Tureck’s recordings of Bach.

I find myself completely engrossed in Boyle’s playing. While I still prefer Bonizzoni, despite the fact that he resolves the final unfinished fugue whereas Boyle breaks it off as written, this is cer­tainly an acceptable and even likeable approach to the music. Your decision to acquire it will depend on your own proclivities.

Bringing “The Art of Fugue” from the printed page to life as sound presents many problems for the performer. For a start, what instrument or instruments to use? Although Tovey’s comment that “no rule of counterpoint is kept more meticulously by Bach than the confinement of the part-writing to the stretch of two hands throughout” this has not stopped performances on groups of just about every possible type of instrument, including guitars, saxophones, trombones and recorders, as well as the less flashy but more effective string quartet and viol consort. If multiple instruments are to be used the last has been the most effective group in my experience. There is nonetheless a good case for the use of a single keyboard instrument, generally organ, harpsichord or piano. Whether the result works for the listener as music depends much more on the performer than on the choice of instrument.

Not only does Bach not specify the instrument to be used, he gives no indication of speed, dynamics or phrasing. All of these are up to the performer and the range of solutions is amazing. Whilst some highly respected musicians I have met remain convinced that this is music for the eye rather than the ear, my own experience of listening to a wide range of versions suggests that on the contrary this is a work which gives the performer both freedom and responsibility – far more so than, say, the Brandenburg Concertos, and in the right hands it can come to life as an astonishingly varied and stimulating collection. Even the most unlikely and eccentric performances can shed considerable light on the work, and any listener who has become fascinated by it is likely to want a selection which can be enjoyed in different ways.

The present version may indeed be described without exaggeration as one of the more unlikely and even eccentric ones. It starts almost inaudibly with a curious hesitation in the rhythm of the theme. The latter is usually “brought out” when it appears in the different voices, and dynamics vary, at times alarmingly. Great care is needed with the volume at which you listen to it. Set it too soft and the start cannot be heard; set it too loud and the louder passages sound ugly and forced. The booklet indicates that Ms Boyle stresses the “orchestral” dimensions of the work, thinking of its articulation in terms of violins, trombones, double bass and flute at various times. I would certainly not quarrel with this as an approach and it is good to hear a performance that is above all determined to capture the changing musical character of the work rather than simply to demonstrate the complexity and ingenuity of the fugal writing. It does however to some degree contradict the essential nature of fugue as being a conversation between four (or three) voices of equal importance, and I do find the often relentless emphasis on the fugue subjects as breaking the flow of the music in an unsubtle way.

At the same time, I must note that Ms Boyle produces some very beautiful sounds and textures, and her speeds are well chosen even if not everyone will enjoy the degree of rubato she employs. She plays only the main Contrapunti, including both versions of the two which can be played also upside down ( rectus and inversus ) but excluding the canons and the Fugue for two keyboards. The final, incomplete, Fugue simply stops where the manuscript breaks off. Whether by accident or design the second of the invertible Fugues has the inversus coming before the rectus although the booklet shows them as appearing in the conventional order.

I would certainly not choose this recording if I were to be restricted to a single version of the work, but as a useful contrast or antidote to more severe versions it does have a legitimate place. It may indeed appeal to anyone who has been put off the music previously because of its reputation or unsympathetic performances. I note that the website of one supplier catalogues it under “New Age” and this is surely a very perceptive decision. I remain uncertain as to whether I like it and there are many moments which I find inexplicable, but I cannot deny the beauty and character that is given to the music – rather than extracted from it – at other times. At the right time and in the right mood you may find this irresistible – I can see it becoming a cult version in some circles – but this is very much a recording you should sample before purchase if possible.

Diana Boyle’s recording of Bach’s Art of Fugue is extraordinarily wonderful…also shocking, revelatory. More than anything, I had the feeling of history flowing backwards, as if Bach’s music had been waiting for later musical evolution to reveal its hidden nature. Her playing seems not so much an art of interpretation as a new creation. The tone is bell-like and magnificent. Her colouring and voicing is phenomenal both in conception and execution. Once in a while something comes along that reconnects me with the ‘absolute’ power and value of certain music and the art of bringing it to life, and this was one of them.

Bach’s The Art of Fugue was the climax of his technical skills and, with his usual combination of musical richness and instrumental knowledge, the composer achieved another masterpiece.

When the modern piano took control, the music changed. Pianist Diana Boyle well understands Bach’s sixteen Contrapuncti , which, step-by-step, created The Art of Fugue as music beyond belief, even beyond the reach of the 21st century.

Bach’s music, Boyle said in a recent interview, ‘is not piano music’ and, when she plays Bach, she ‘is often thinking of the violin, not least in the variety of articulation which the violin is capable of.’

Of the three [Bach] recordings featured here, Boyle’s CD captivates me most. She has made a very good performance and understands the nature of the music, but most of all, she is genuine.

Bach’s Art of Fugue is a great musical enigma; left strangely unfinished, it is thought perhaps to have been intended not for performance but as a definitive guide to the writing of fugues, or a personal musical message meant as the composer’s greatest legacy … in any event it is a supreme masterpiece and here is given a brilliant and individual interpretation, in which Diana Boyle (whose Metier CD of the 48 Preludes and Fugues, Book II is also highly praised) brings out classical-style emphasis and phrasing, bring the music alive more than in traditional dry and academic accounts. The recording omits the optional ‘canons’ but includes the ‘Inversus’ sections of Contrapuncti 12 and 13.