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Liberation, 04/03/1999
Rosalyn Tureck, from the Other Side of Bach, by Eric
Danan
Rosalyn Tureck has just created an event by recording
her first record for Deutsche Grammophon. As a result people are currently
hurrying into the theatres of Europe, to hear the woman through whom the
truth about Bach happens.
Midi Libre, 18/02/99
Rosalyn Tureck in the gardens of JS Bach - Rémy Loury
An album which will assuredly join the ranks of the most precious
in the great record collections of those mad about music.
The
result is a shining exploration of the innumerable possiblities offered by
Bach: the majestic entrance of the first variation, the brave sharp notes
of the fourth, the ornamental refinements of the seventh, the impenetrable
sweetness of the fifteenth, the fascinating and visionary sarabande on the
twenty-fifth.
Each variation has its life, perfectly autonomous,
but attached to a whole from which one would not know how to detach it.
And at the end of this, as after a silence that only music can
offer, one finds the the initial theme again, just as destabilising as the
return of a dear one believed gone forever.
Perhaps it is the
privilege of a great age, but such an intensity of emotion has never, I
believe, been heard.
taz (Germany), January 30/31 1999
Goldberg Variations the Fifth, by Frank Siebert
Rosalyn Tureck considers the new version of the Goldberg
Variations to be "the sum of my entire musical, technical and scientific
experience as an interpreter and as a person who is interested in ideas
and feelings". The carefully-edited CD offers every computer-owner with a
CD ROM player the additional CD-plus-score system - the possibility of
following Tureck's edition of the score next to her analytical comments on
screen, and of calling up further information and pictorial information on
Bach's life and works, as well as on the career of the artist.
The
actual achievement remains the music, however. The energetic strength of
her playing does not merely declare itself through the realm of nuances of
her touch, nor through the strictness of her performance, nor through a
rhythm chiselled as though swinging, nor through her polyphonic kingdom.
This strength comes from the sum of a life of artistry filled with
experiences. What is convincing about Tureck's playing is that human
surplus value, which is freed through this great knowledge.
When,
at the end of the Goldberg Variations, after the theme of the whole cosmos
of Bach's art of metamorphosis has passed by, the Aria rings out again in
sublime simplicity, Rosalyn Tureck has brought back through her playing
that which is most often bemoaned as lost in today's civilisation: time.
Le Monde - 13/02/99
Rosalyn Tureck - the Meridian, by Marie-Aude Roux
The American pianist releases an historic recording of the
Goldberg Variations.
What rapture in this combination of diverse
voices that Tureck made sing for a lifetime in order to blend them here in
an uncompromising piano! All of this in the art of miniature, a knowledge
of detail, which, however, did not exclude the harshnesses nor the ranges
of barren sonorities which roll like pebbles. From start to finish the
tempo remains wide, ambulatory, more than a walk in the garden, it's life
returning to its source a time before measure, a vision of origin.
There would have been pages to write about each note! such heights
of view, of grace, the mystery of an osmosis between a master and his
interpreter, the extravagant sensuality of such a piano joined to such
royal modesty.
There are exceptional recordings marking musical
history with their white stone, and there are others, even rarer, which
draw there their meridian: a line crossed over by such a thing that
nothing will ever again be as before. These Goldberg Variations are one of
those.
Le Monde - 4 January 1999
Famous and unknown, the pianist eclipsed by Glenn Gould -
Alain Lompech
Rosalyn Tureck is no unknown discovered by a
record company. This artist is one of the most accomplished musicians of
this century. She has never ceased to play, be heard, admired, discussed,
and copied, even, without ever occupying the forefront of the stage. She
says so herself, if it hadn't been for a small American publisher, her
performances would be out of reach today. In other times, however, Tureck
recorded occasionally for several major firms, but her misfortune, our
misfortune, rather, went by the name of Glenn Gould. The Canadian's
playing was undoubtedly derived from that of his lady colleague, but in
the consciousness of music lovers everywhere, it will have left him only a
folding seat.
The great commercial advantage in Gould's Bach
technique resides in its unequivocal, simplistic character. That clear
piano, that clarified, voluble polyphony was ideally ready-to-listen-to in
the post-war years. So they made Gould the Bach performer par excellence.
This abuse of a dominant position should be challenged: Gould only offers
one of the oppositions in performance, for he has chosen to play
descriptively, systematically, using a power of seduction that has put
more than one listener to sleep.
Rosalyn Tureck is no less
voluntarist in her playing, but her more complex, less cellophaned
performance, less easily accessible, too, give an image of Bach that is at
once archaic, timeless, and sensitive without being expressionistic,
analytical without being motorique. Owing nothing to the harpsichord, and
taking advantage of all the possibilities offered by the piano - an
instrument that is reinvented each time by the person touching it -
Rosalyn Tureck is an artist without being an egocentric. Her great quality
is to impose a perception of musical time that is incredibly different
from one individual to another, by succeeding in recreating Bach's music
in all its complexity. The contemplative will delight in the sumptuous
sound of her performances, the keenest ears will excitedly follow the path
taken by the Kantor's scholarly contrapuntal constructions and lovers of
the piano will get drunk on the infinite variety of attacks and colours in
such a venerable technique.
Gramophone, January 1999
The High Priestess of Bach - Rob Cowan
One
hopes this newly formed alliance might eventually result in more Tureck
Bach on the Yellow Label. Who knows, maybe even a new 48.
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