My favourite works and recordings of J.S. Bach

Some notes

On 3rd June, I am discussing Electric Spark with Frances Wilson at Blackwells in Oxford. And on 17th July I am discussing The Genius Myth with Helen Lewis at Dr. Johnson’s House.

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It is good just to think about Johann Sebastian
Bach, grinding away like the mills of God,
Producing masterpieces, and legitimate children —
Twenty one in all — and earning his bread.

John Heath Stubbs

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Evan Goldfine

, who writes

A Year of Bach

, is starting a podcast and I was very pleased to be his first guest. The episode will be out in a day or two. In the meanwhile, here are some notes and links about the Bach recordings I have most enjoyed.

I began listening to Bach very young because of the movie Fantasia, which opens with Stokowski’s orchestration of Tocata and Fugue in D Minor (the Bach music everyone knows). Fantasia obsessed me slightly, and I saw it many many times. But I never went back after my childhood, and when I showed it to my children recently I was surprised by the Stokowski performance: I had “discovered” that music a few years earlier and loved it. So Fantasia did not stay in my memory very directly (I would guess I didn’t watch it much after the age of seven or eight?) but it left me with a real love of the music.

The next time I remember loving Bach was when I was sixteen or seventeen or so, perhaps earlier (how do people remember the chronology of their lives so clearly?). I had been listened to classic music for a few years, and Bach at that time was becoming central to what I liked. My then girlfriend (herself an accomplished singer and viola player) had a sister who was a professional singer, who I heard perform in the St John Passion in a church in Sussex, conducted by Colin Davis. It was amazing. (You could hear Davis humming as he conducted.)

I don’t remember many of the specific pieces that meant a lot to me at that time, but I do know I was listening to a lot of Bach among other things. I was advised by a teacher to listen to the double violin concerto. I went to the concert hall almost every week (one of the splendid English teachers at my school ran an Arts Club of which I was a dedicated member). It was perhaps a year later that I heard the motets, which are still among my favourites. John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi choir is my preferred recording.

At university I discovered much more Bach. I had some musical friends and it was the beginning of music streaming. There was too much to remember what exactly I discovered, but Glenn Gould has been a constant presence in my life since at least this time. When I was young, I couldn’t countenance anything other than his 1955 Goldbergs. Later on, I preferred the slow beauty of the 1981. Now I like to listen to them back-to-back. For the Goldbergs, I also love Angela Hewitt, whose recording is underrated in general. (The 30 Bach podcast is one good way to survey the many recording available.) If you like Gould, the documentaries about him are unmissable. Starting at 7:50 in that link you can hear him rehearsing the second partita in a way he never recorded. It’s excellent.

I have heard Gould’s partitas hundreds of times. Presumably it is not possible to have heard them thousands of times, but I feel like I have. (Argerich is also a favourite.) The record I remember most strongly discovering at university is Byron Janis playing the Bach-Liszt Prelude and fugue in A minor, BWV543. It has a High Romantic passion and darkness I have never heard matched in a Bach performance. In my early twenties, I listened to it repeatedly while reading Cowper’s letters and poems (and the David Cecil biography), to which it is well suited.

I kept buying CDs until my early/mid twenties, when I stopped altogether, something I now regret. Although the expense has not been missed, I loved CDs, especially my box set of great Karajan recordings. (I also used to listen to Radio 3 as much as possible.) Streaming and YouTube allowed me to discover more music, however, including Julia Fischer playing the Violin Sonatas and Partitas, and Andras Schiff playing the French Suites (not music I love). Which are the unmissable Violin recordings? I know: Perlman, Milstein, Heifetz, and so on. But none of those really stay with me after I have listened. Fischer the same. (Don’t miss Grimaud playing the Chaconne on piano.)

One joyful album is Piano Transcriptions by great pianists, including Rachmanniov. I also became obsessed with the Olafsson version of the Partitas, which contain somehow so much more light than Gould. He plays Bach with a running happiness. (His Goldburgs are good too.)

Some of the recordings I have enjoyed the most are from All of Bach, a project from the Netherlands Bach Society to record All of Bach and put it online. It is perhaps the best YouTube channel.

What follows are videos of the Four Harpsichord concerto, the Little Fugue, and the Violin Concerto in D Minor. They also do an excellent Art of Fugue, though hard to compare to Sokolov and Trifonov (who is incredible at Bach—the album The Art of Life is just superb; he is our Glenn Gould). I can just about listen to their Well Tempered Clavier, which is on harpsichord. I find the harpsichord utterly grating. My favourite All of Bach performance is a double harpsichord concerto reconstructed for violin and oboe, which is beautiful.

Although I am always happy to hear Bach live (and you can often hear it played at St. Paul’s on a Sunday), I have not loved many organ recordings. All of Bach has produced quite a few which I enjoyed. If you want the famous one, they do that very well.

When I read Patricia Highsmith’s Diaries, I loved how much she loved Bach, and I made a YouTube playlist of the pieces she mentioned. You can find the whole thing here. It includes the Jussen twins playing Sheep May Safely Graze (a recording my wife loves) (there’s also an excellent Buniatishvili recording).

I specially love the recording of BWV 564 on that list. It is full of happiness. You will not be able to remain still while listening to it. It is in the fugue section, starting at 10:10 when things really start to go wild with joy. (Hurford is pretty good, too, but not as lively.)

Finally, we have to mention the cello suites. I don’t know when I first listened to them. I prefer 3, 4, and 6. YoYo Ma is great, and Casals, but not who I often go to. For a long time, my choice was Rostropovich. These days I might prefer Navarra. But one should always listen to as much Rostropovich as possible, playing everything, not just Bach.

Perhaps the Bach I now listen to the most is this recording by Glenn Gould of the Three Part Inventions. It is peaceful, happy, lively.