Over the past 20 years, Chicago-born and Boston-based pianist
Andrew Rangell has devoted his career to the best and the highest works in the repertoire. From his early recordings of
Bach's Goldberg Variations and
Beethoven's late sonatas on Dorian to his later recordings of
Chopin's mazurkas and
Schubert's last sonata on Bridge,
Rangell has deliberately sought out the profoundest music for his instrument, and through his commanding technique, prodigious intellect, and consummate artistry has created a series of recordings that stand comparison to the best ever released.
Rangell continued his winning streak with this 2007 two-disc set of Book One of
Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. Naturally, he plays it on a modern piano, a Hamburg Steinway D, to be precise, and naturally, he plays it as a modern pianist, a Juilliard trained virtuoso, to be exact. Not that he abuses, or even much uses, the pedals to sustain a line. For
Rangell, clarity is all, and in his hands, everything is clear -- luminously clear. Indeed, his preludes and fugues shine so hard they practically sparkle, the counterpoint unrolling in utterly lucid lines. And through this crystalline clarity, unobstructed by the performer's ego,
Bach's music emerges pure and unsullied. Certainly, there have been more beautiful, more propulsive, more virtuosic, and more emotional recordings of the Goldberg Variations on piano, but in terms of sheer musicality, few outmatch
Rangell's. Recorded in Boston's Gardner Museum with the performer serving as producer, the digital sound here is clean with a wonderful sense of time and place.