Few pianists would launch their record debut with such a monumental work as Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues. But South Korean-American Minsoo Sohn's decision is both a testament to his awe and love of Bach but also to his teacher, Russell Sherman(1930-2023) He writes movingly of Bach's 'cosmic world' and, with understatement, of 'a challenging journey.' He reflects on Russell Sherman as an inspiration who saw music as an ultimate mirror of life itself, saying, ' to witness his every day approach as a musician, as a human being and an artist was his biggest lesson for me.' Great teachers in any field are rare and Sohn is hardly alone in paying tribute to Sherman's stature.
There have, of course, been many recordings of Bach's keyboard foundation, and argument has continued and sometimes seethed over the years regarding authenticity, over the performance of the 48 on historic or modern instruments. As an unapologetic contemporary pianist Sohn joins Edwin Fisher(the first complete recording dating from 1933-1936), then through the years to the dazzling, idiosyncratic Glenn Gould, Roslyn Tureck(made before her playing became pedantic and she acquired the sobriquet 'The High Priestess of Bach'), Sviatoslav Richter, Samuel Feinburg, Friedrich Gulda and, moving to own times, Angela Hewitt, Andras Schiff, Daniel Barenboim and Vladimir Ashkenazy.
The line is long and distinguished, yet laying my cards firmly on the table, Minsoo Sohn's new recording is a superlative achievement at every possible level. If there still remain poor souls for whom Bach's 48 is little more than a didactic study in polyphony(in Russia Bach was long regarded as a contrapuntal machine useful for exam purposes, before the he was taken in masterly hands by Richter, Ashkenazy and warm-heartedly by Tatiana Nickolaeva, then Sohn's combination of expressive beauty and lucidity sweeps all archaic notions of Bach as ''
'the old wig' into oblivion
It may seem far-fetched to mention in passing the far distant Romanticism of Artur Ruinstein's first recording of the Chopin Mazurkas, but listening once more to the entire set I was struck by a no unrelated marvel of freedom, of a clarity and radiance known only to a few. After all Chopin was a great lover of Bach, his influence present in his own 24 Preludes.
And so, to Minsoo Sohn. In the opening Prelude all familiarity vanishes, not through idiosyncrasy but through playing as natural as it is subtly inflected. The pained reflection of Prelude 4 is so precisely yet evocatively caught, and the long working out of Prelude 13, given without a hint of strenuousness, is resolved in Sohn's joyous radiant way with the following fugue. In Prelude 10(the one romantically re-worked by Siloti) there is a moving confidentiality while in Prelude and Fugue No 13 the playing is a marvel of concentrated vitality and piquancy. Again, what a triumphant sense of home-coming in the Fugue from No 15 and in the colloquy of the Prelude No 18 with its insistently tapping fugue.
Clearly, I could continue at length and yet the singling out of particular Preludes and Fugues somehow denies or impedes a sense of the whole, of overall mastery and refinement. Book 2 of the 48 must surely follow. If for Minsoo Sohn the 48 are above all 'a gift for humanity, I can only add that his performance is also a very special gift, beautifully and naturally reorded by Hyperion.
Bryce Morrison