J.S. Bach: Well-Tempered Clavier

This is my desert island WTC now. Her contrapuntal lines are clear and precise, yet the music sings and dances;full of life and poetry.The recorded sound is superb too-a full bodied piano sound with just the right amount of ambience.I have to get a copy of her book too.

Beware the preview excerpt - some things cannot show up in them!I had listened to preview excerpts, on Amazon and elsewhere, from many recordings of Bach's Well Tempered Clavier (WTC), but had actually missed this one. I eventually narrowed my choice down to Jeno Jando and Roger Woodward, and finally settled for Woodward, and purchased that version, which was really excellent apart from a rather obtrusive studio acoustic. Woodward brought out so much in the music without applying the affectations and over-strong rubato that turned me away from the widely popular big name pianists.All well and good, but unfortunately the jewel case of Book 2 was broken inside, with the discs all being loose in the case. Although the discs appeared not to have significant damage, I found that disc 4 of the 5 had lots of clicks, so I returned that set to Amazon for a replacement. However, while I was dealing with that I noticed the usual slightly irritating selection of Amazon recommendations below the business part of one of the pages I got then, and it included this recording, of Zhu Xiao-Mei playing the WTC. As I'd already got her rendering of The Art of Fugue on my shopping list I thought to check the preview excerpts of her version and compare with the Woodward version. On that basis it appeared that she and he were very much in the same league, with wonderfully shaped and varied playing, and without affectation, at least that was obtrusive to me. But really what made me want her version rather than Woodward's was the piano sound, which was brighter and without obtrusiveness of the studio acoustics. So, the Amazon people helpfully agreed to change my replacement request to a refund one, and I purchased the Zhu Xiao-Mei version.On auditioning this set, initially all my good impressions from the preview excerpts seemed borne out. I loved her lightness and freshness of approach. However, here and there she did something at the end of certain pieces that to my ears was horrible - primarily those that were very 'busy'. She would end the piece with a strong rallentando (slowing down) combined with the final few chords being emphatic and shortened, giving the very strong message "There you are - I've got to the end of this!", as though she'd been doing a cursory play-through of some popular 'party piece' to a group of friends. -- Ouch! This really offended me, being a complete switch-off. There was I, 'walking on air', and suddenly that 'air' was blown out from under me as her finishing gesture denied the sublimity of what she'd just been playing!I sort-of accepted that the first time, but the effect was cumulative, so that through Book 2 I really couldn't engage that much with the music at all, seemingly because I'd got sensitized to the way she was ending some of the pieces, and so I was feeling that she was playing for show rather than really getting to the heart of the music. I ended up simply not wanting to listen to her performances (of anything) any more. Therefore, sadly, I have now ordered the Woodward set again, and will pass the Zhu Xiao-Mei recording on to a local charity shop.Later note:I did get the Roger Woodward version again, and, listening to that then, I came to realize that actually Xiao-Mei was being far too self-conscious and forced in her use of dynamics to shape phrases, and that in itself was drawing attention to her playing rather than leaving one to freely live with the music. In the case of Woodward, the dynamic shaping of phrases flows naturally, like breathing, and simply gives life to the music all the time, without drawing attention to him. I'm so relieved to have got back to Woodward's version!

These are lovely performances, with clear textures, scrupulous articulation, crisp rhythms, lively ornamentation and a fairly close recording. One can always dispute details - for example, some will consider the tempi of certain movements to be on the fast side or dislike the dance-like spring in others. Having read her book, however, a key extra dimension for me was understanding Zhu Xiao-Mei's intense relationship with Bach's music during the painful years of her earlier life.