Vladimir Ashkenazy's piano recordings have been rare over the last few years. Most of his energies have gone into recording orchestral works with him at the baton, with great results. Everybody knows that he started his career many years ago as a great pianist, and this performance of the Well-Tempered demonstrates that he still is a great pianist. This is an intelligent reading of the work as a whole, warm, clear, detailed without being clinical. In Ashkenazy's interpretation it does not sound Baroque like most, but seems rather to transcend time and present itself as a great keyboard work that could have been composed at any time in musical history. As an added bonus, it is available as a 3 cd set as opposed to the usual 4.

Jean-Yves Duperron