Piano great Vladimir Ashkenazy forsakes stage for studio and a lifetime of Bach

Now he has retired from live performance, Vladimir Ashkenazy continues his landmark survey of keyboard works by Bach.

Vladimir Ashkenazy has forsaken his conductor’s baton for the recording studio and more Bach. Picture: Dan Himbrechts

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When Vladimir Ashkenazy spent five years as chief conductor of Sydney Symphony Orchestra he was rarely heard here in his primary role as a concert pianist.

And now that he has announced his retirement from public performance we will have to fall back on his thankfully huge catalogue of recordings to hear that touch and poetic mastery which set the music world ablaze when he defected from the Soviet Union for the West in the early 1960s.

Fortunately for his fans he still records and has lost none of his manifest talents in the process, despite his 84 years. And it is to Bach that he has turned in his sunset years, starting in 2004 on the Glorious 48 – the Well-Tempered Clavier – and continuing in recent years with the six Partitas, the Italian Concerto, French Suites and, now with this 2020 release, the first three of the English Suites.

And to mark his 56-year partnership with Decca the record label has re-released as a bonus the first Bach recording Ashkenazy made, a 1965 performance of the Keyboard Concerto No 1 in D minor BWV 1052 with the London Symphony Orchestra under David Zinman.

Vladimir Ashkenazy's Bach English Suites 1-3.

Originally coupled with Chopin’s second piano concerto, it shows that the young Russian was a match for that other great interpreter of Bach, Canadian virtuoso Glenn Gould – whom he knew and admired – but with a very different and less individualistic approach.

Coming from the Romantic tradition where big Romantic works were the norm, Ashkenazy’s clean and fuss-free handling of Bach surprised many at the time, and that ability to let the music speak for itself is still an integral element of his 21st century recordings.

“Bach is the foundation, and source, of all our great music,” he says, adding with disarming modesty, “next to Bach, I am nothing.”

Having left the great master’s works unrecorded for so long because, he admits, they were on such a “high spiritual plane” that he had doubts about how to approach them, we can now reap the rewards of his decision to finally tackle them. These three English Suites are Bach at his most approachable – full of joy, lyrical beauty and with some surprising turns – and the album allows you to share in Ashkenazy’s obvious enjoyment of them.

Bring on the next volume!

You can get Bach English Suites 1-3 for $23.96 at classicsdirect.com.au.