(Grigory Sokolov | 2011 | Live) Bach: Clavierübung, Book II

This is a programme from Sokolov I’ll never forget. Here’s one I’ll take the liberty to speak about from a personal perspective. It was in the autumn of 2011 that I unsuspectingly sat down in a concert hall in Gävle, north of Stockholm, to listen to Sokolov play Bach and Brahms. The Bach the 28 year old me had recognized at that time was still primarily the logician and the pure musician - the Bach of Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, say, or the disembodied writing found in some of his organ works which is so general that it appears to have no author, and describe no material concepts. As Sokolov progressed however, and particularly in the remarkable French Overture, I realized that this was not Bach playing as I was used to, with the aim of presenting a musically compelling or ’personal’ view of the polyphony. What transpired right in front of me was rather a full artistic and cultural recreation of Bach’s world, where the music as Sokolov played it sprang organically out of t