Bach: The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080 (MacGregor)

For lyricism, warmth, and narrative intelligence I don’t think this recording of The Art of Fugue has been bettered. MacGregor’s concern is always to make each piece uplifting in its own way, and to give each its distinct character: C.1 and C.14 are taken at tempi which make them sing, C.4 is given lots of intimate articulative touches, and the stretti in C.5, usually dramatic, enter with a sense of quiet repose, making the piece luminously mysterious. C.2 and C.6 - the two dotted-rhythm fugues - swing away like there’s no tomorrow: C.2 in particularly is given a kind of jazzy casualness that’s really effective. C.7’s gentle murmuring is perfect prelude to the energetic C.8. C.12, usually dead-serious, has a pompous swagger about it (particularly in the inversus), emphasized by the clashing notes created by the by crossing voices and the use of staccato in the scalar passages. In the 2-keyboard version of C.13 MacGregor opts not to tripletize the semiquavers, generating lots of lovely rhythmic variety. See also the long lines of the Canon at the twelfth, the carefully shaped subject in the Canon at the tenth, and the wonderful articulation in the Canon with following voice inverted and augmented. Another feature of the playing worth mentioning is its fantastic sense of (hard to find the right words for this) harmonic movement - the sequences are uniformly beautiful.
But if there is a single quality of the playing here that’s especially arresting, it’s the narrative drama MacGregor brings to the longer fugues. C.8 is given symphonic treatment, with stark pauses, huge dynamic changes, and expressive changes in tempo. C.11 starts quiet and unmoving and stays that way for a long while, even when the second subject enters - until at 36:10 a very gradual crescendo enters, gathering in strength until at 36:41 a climax is reached and the music fades back into dreaminess again. The whole piece, taken at a relatively slow pace, feels timeless and monumental - the dense chromaticism of the last section, instead of coming across as wild, has a sense of desperation or intense sadness, even as it builds into that heart-stopping climax at 42:40 (in general MacGregor’s got a great way of building into dramatic moments: 14:30, 17:50, 23:18, and so on). And C.14, often forlorn, is now hopeful, rapt.
00:00 - Contrapunctus 1
03:59 - Contrapunctus 2
06:10 - Contrapunctus 3
08:46 - Contrapunctus 4
11:30 - Contrapunctus 5
14:47 - Contrapunctus 6
18:30 - Contrapunctus 7
21:03 - Contrapunctus 8
26:00 - Contrapunctus 9
28:11 - Contrapunctus 10
33:52 - Contrapunctus 11
44:37 - Canon at the octave
48:24 - Canon at the tenth
53:32 - Canon at the twelfth
56:50 - Canon with following voice inverted and augmented
1:00:25 - Contrapunctus 12, rectus [inversus at 1:02:43]
1:05:03 - Contrapunctus 13, rectus [inversus at 1:07:19]
1:09:44 - Contrapunctus 14
1:17:40 - Mirror fugue for Two Keyboards, based on Contrapunctus 13, inversus [rectus at 1:19:54]