Album

Die Kunst der Fuge: what a way to make your Deutsche Grammophon solo recording debut. That's especially true if you're Pierre-Laurent Aimard, whose full-time gig is with Pierre Boulez's Ensemble InterContemporain and whose reputation was made in the avant-garde and not the late Baroque.

This casting against type works in Aimard's favor. The intellectual cast of Bach's Art of the Fugue is perfect for a pianist who can play György Ligeti's etudes, and one would expect Aimard to deliver a reading of rare lucidity and crystalline virtuosity. But that he delves so deeply beneath the work's dense counterpoint to articulate the expressive art concealed by the music's technical brilliance is a pleasant surprise. Aimard's performances have not only the rigor of logic and rhetoric, they have the compulsion of drama. Recorded in translucent digital sound in the Mozart-Saal of Vienna's Konzerthaus, this recording deserves a wide audience, despite its apparent mismatch between performer and music.

© James Leonard, All Music Guide

CD 1
Johann Sebastian Bach Composer Art of the Fugue (Die Kunst der Fuge), BWV1080...Part 1: 14 Fugues (Contrapuncti) Work 54:32 Pierre-Laurent Aimard Piano
1	Contrapunctus 1 (simple fugue)	3:01			$0.99
2	Contrapunctus 2 (simple fugue with 'French rhythm')	2:38			$0.99
3	Contrapunctus 3 (simple inversion fugue)	3:10			$0.99
4	Contrapunctus 4 (simple inversion fugue with countersubject)	3:04			$0.99
5	Contrapunctus 5 (stretto fugue)	3:06			$0.99
6	Contrapunctus 6 ('in stilo francese')	4:40			$0.99
7	Contrapunctus 7 ('per augmentationem et diminutionem')	4:09			$0.99
8	Contrapunctus 8 (triple fugue)	7:00			$1.49
9	Contrapunctus 9 ('alla Duodecima'; double fugue)	2:18			$0.99
10	Contrapunctus 10 ('alla Decima'; double fugue)	3:44			$0.99
11	Contrapunctus 11 (triple fugue)	7:04			$1.49
12	Contrapunctus 12b ('mirror' fugue 1: inversus)	3:01			$0.99
13	Contrapunctus 12a ('mirror' fugue 1: rectus)	3:14			$0.99
14	Contrapunctus 13b ('mirror' fugue 2: inversus)	2:08			$0.99
15	Contrapunctus 13a ('mirror' fugue 2: rectus)	2:15			$0.99
Johann Sebastian Bach Composer Art of the Fugue (Die Kunst der Fuge), BWV1080...Part 2: 4 Canons Work 16:36 Pierre-Laurent Aimard Piano
16	Canon 1: Canon alla Ottava	2:19			$0.99
17	Canon 2: Canon alla Decima	4:16			$0.99
18	Canon 3: Canon all Duodecima	1:58			$0.49
19	Canon 4: Canon per Augmentationem in contrario Motu	8:03			$1.49
Johann Sebastian Bach Composer Art of the Fugue (Die Kunst der Fuge), BWV1080...Part 1: 14 Fugues (Contrapuncti) Work Pierre-Laurent Aimard Piano
20	Contrapunctus 14 ('Fuga a 3 Soggetti'; unfinished)	7:18			$1.49