Music : Bach - Keyboard Concertos

Rating: - Inauthentic Bach at its best!!
Glenn Gould's view of concerto form was largely negative, but the baroque concerto with its less flamboyant solo role was more acceptable to him. Here we have 6 concertos, wonderfully integrated between orchestra & soloist. No.1 is the most substantial & achieves transcendental levels even for Bach. Gould's playing is equal to the greatness of the music, displaying fluidity in the outer movements & intensity in the adagio. The other concertos meet with similar success: try the largo from no.5 where Gould plays a single note melody against plucked string background...who else could achieve such a poignant result? Concertos 3&7 will be familiar as violin concertos but they succeed equally well in Gould's performances. All the orchestral parts come from a time before specialist, smaller groups came into fashion. However the playing is vibrant & committed. So this is not one for the baroque purist, but you won't hear better piano versions of these works.