…… This is a lovely piano performance of the great Well-Tempered Clavier. The best one I recall hearing.
Roger Woodward avoids eccentricities - he renders this beautifully, with no attempt to mimic a harpsichord. He uses the tonal palette of the piano, never affected, but full of depth and emotion. The interplay of all the voices, with various parts emerging and receding, is sensitively done. The piano tone is gentle in general, but incisive when needed. Best of all, he really makes everything sing. Every piece is characterized individually; there is a wonderful variety of tone colours and articulation. Most recordings of this cycle have a sameness of interpretation that dulls the mind after a while, but not here. And to top it all off, the set comes with mini-scores as well as very nice reproductions of the facsimile manuscript.
A must-have performance.