It has been said, and I agree, that Maria Yudina plays Bach in a manner that anticipates the Bach of Glenn Gould. To my mind there is no greater compliment. This is not to say their Bach sounds alike, rather that their approach to the performance of his music shares a commonly unique insight into the keyboard music of that great master. Each pianist enjoys an ear that hears the voices speak and is able to reproduce the music in a living, breathing contrapuntal fabric. I would further go out on a limb and say that Vladimir Feltsman is another pianist who has drunk from the same fountain.
Here we have the compete Goldberg Variations played by Maria Yudina. Listen carefully to the extraordinary dialogue in the aria between the soprano and the bass lines. Such discourse, sometimes in complete accord, others at odds, quite insistently so. The depth of Yudina's grasp of this music is chilling.
Similarly, the single example we have of one of the Preludes and Fugues, the B flat minor from Book I of the Well Tempered Clavier, makes me want to rethink my life. Her exploration of the sonorities caused by Bach's use of dissonance takes the Prelude out of the realm of the purely beautiful and catapults it into the transcendental. And from between the lines the strength and courage of this amazing woman shine out like a beacon.
Bach Goldberg Variations, BWV 988
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Part VIII
Bach Prelude and Fugue in Bb minor BWV 867
Bach Chromatic Fantasia & Fugue BWV 903
Bach/Liszt Organ Prelude & Fugue BWV 543 Recorded live in 1953
Bach Concerto in D minor BWV 1052 Kurt Sanderling conducting the All-Union Radio Symphony Orchestra Recorded live in 1956
i Allegro
ii Adagio
iii Allegro
Bach Chromatic Fantasia & Fugue BWV 903 Recorded live in 1953 ii Andante
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