Bach: Inside Polyphony

On Bach "Inside Polyphony", we get a superlative recording from 2L with pianist Christian Grovlen. The album is available to download in state-of-the-art two and five channel DXD and DSD formats.

On the album, we find a refined reading that offers ample piano expression, details and rhythms, with a timbropianistico of excellence by a recording that even in two-channel proves a reference for the recording of this instrument. Christian Grovlen is the interpreter and the program contains Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, some "Symphonies", the French Suite n. 3 and Paritait n. 5.

It is a small compendium of Bach's keyboard production. After careful listening, the album's surprise is the naturalness of the recording that with "soft" and "captivating" tones, offers the mosaic texture and the most elaborate counterpoint without veils. A transparent window on the partiture that protects us from extravagance. Good listening indeed.

2L makes bold claims for this recording. They suggest that we can expect something revolutionary, as innovative as Glenn Gould’s approach was to Bach in his day. I can have to confess that I am not entirely persuaded that Christian Grøvlen lives up to the claims of their intro. But taken on its own terms, just as music, there’s no arguing that there’s some wonderful playing here.

Grøvlen has a warm, rounded tone, helped by 2L’s luminous recorded sound. The clarity of the counterpoint is indeed remarkable. Grøvlen plays with immense calm and poise in the slower movements and with a dancing lightness in the more jovial ones. It’s the kind of musicianship you will reach for when you come in from a hellish day at the office. It will iron the stress out of your day.

When it comes to Bach's keyboard works transscribed for piano, one is almost always faced with two possible types of readings. One that intends to 'clear the piano' as an ideal instrument to perform the music of Bach and the other that tries to mediate the piano as the last link in a chain that originates from the harpsichord and clavichord and which inherits from these latter two the constructive and emotional tensions of the expressed sound.

The approach chosen by 27-year-old Norwegian pianist Christian Grovlen to record this work dedicated to 'Polyphony Bach' is the first type of reading. His piano performance gives way to sonorities capable of enhancing the phrasing and the 'polyphonic encounter' present in the works performed here (the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor, the Symphonies, the French Suite No. 3 and the Partita No. 5).

The result is really interesting both in conception and in its realization. It puts Christian Grovlen as an interpreter par excellence among those who belong to the latest generations of pianists."