![]() There is craftsmanship without coldness and a serenity that speaks eloquently for the virtues of old age. Horszowski has translated the often rhapsodic nature of these earlier preludes into a language of calm. From Arabesque comes the same music played by the Brazilian pianist, Joao Carlos Martins (Arabesque 6505-3). From Vanguard come the 24 Preludes and Fugues of Book I played by Mieczyslaw Horszowksi, a pianist now in his 91st year (VCS 10138/40). The two releases also provide a wonderful lesson in the uses and the dangers of the modern piano. Two recent recordings of Book I of ''The Well-Tempered Clavier'' show that - no matter the instrument -Bach's music will survive intact under the right hands and that it will blur and distort under the wrong ones. Both camps seem assured of continued life and health, so the current concerns in performance practice have turned less to the ''how'' and more to the ''how well.''ĭoes Bach's keyboard music, for example, belong exclusively to the harpsichord, the clavichord and the organ - does it lie uncomfortably on the keys of the modern piano? Or does this music keep step with each succeeding age, adapting its language to new instruments as they develop? The uses of the past and the needs of the present seem, for the moment at least, not particularly a matter of good versus evil or one esthetic enclave against the other. ![]() ![]() With the ''authenticity'' movement now so normal to our musical life, we are becoming a little less pompous about stylistic rectitude and period instruments. ![]()
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