On this two-disc set the Austrian pianist Till Fellner plays the complete first book of Johann Sebastian Bach's Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, the 24 preludes and fugues BWV 846-869. They pass through every major and minor key in rising order. It was Fellner's first album for ECM. His reading on the modern piano is clear, unhurried and free of display, with its attention on structure and voice-leading.
Fellner was born in Vienna in 1972, counts Alfred Brendel among his teachers, and in 1993 won first prize at the Clara Haskil Competition in Vevey. Before this release he had recorded Beethoven and Schubert for Erato. The sessions took place in September and October 2002 at the Jugendstiltheater in Vienna, with Manfred Eicher producing and Markus Heiland as engineer. The booklet essay is by Dirk Möller. The first disc holds the twelve pairs from C major to F minor, the second the twelve from F sharp major to B minor.
The Prelude in C major sets the tone, its broken chords laid out softly and evenly, with none of the detached attack Glenn Gould brought to it. Much of the playing uses little pedal, and the fugue subjects are marked with care rather than hammered home, so that the separate voices stay audible as lines. The slow, grave pieces carry the weight of the set. The Prelude in E flat minor and its companion Fugue in D sharp minor run close to ten minutes together. The Fugue in F minor and the closing Prelude and Fugue in B minor are taken with patient, even breadth.
The album was named Recording of the Month by Stereophile and Disc of the Month by Classic FM, and it entered the quarterly list of the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik in 2004. In the New York Times, Anthony Tommasini found that "Mr. Fellner's faithful and sensitive performance, with its soft-spoken quality, is especially satisfying." Geoffrey Norris in the Daily Telegraph called it "Bach-playing of the first order". At MusicWeb International in 2004, Don Satz praised the lean textures and the warmth of the fugues, while placing the set beside, not above, his favourite versions.
This is the 2CD edition on ECM New Series, catalogue number ECM New Series 1853/54, first released on 26 January 2004.
