Filippo Gorini - Bach: The Art of Fugue - Le Devoir

4.5*

At the 2020 Montreal Bach Festival, Filippo Gorini performed The Art of the Fugue, from Turin, as part of the National Cinema Museum, the camera inviting us to a guided tour. Alas! The visual aspect distracted our attention from a work that requires the highest concentration, and Internet broadcasting was fraught with jumps and micro-cuts. We hoped that the delayed listening would restore this approach to its essence. Hope fulfilled. In this Berlin audio recording of September 2020, the absence of images refocuses our attention. This is important, because Gorini associates, in the libretto, a narrative framework to his approach. Why? "The idea that [the work] should only be considered as a purely jewel theory is erroneous", affirms the pianist who couples "formal complexity" and "emotional tension". In fact, the Contrapunctus X rocks us in another world. We follow with a growing fascination the conduct of the phrases of the pianist, to the point of damn ire of having to change the disc.