Press Extracts
BACH: THE WELL-TEMPERED CLAVIER (VOL-1) BBC LEGENDS
Playing which transcends questions of authentic instrument or style.
As is characteristic of Tureck's Bach, she combines technique with, expression in a way that makes one barely aware of the physicality of her playing. Her range of articulation is something to marvel at and her judicious use of both pedals enables a range of timbre and colour that brings the music to life. Indeed, the truth of Tureck's playing transcends her choice of instrument.
Gramophone, 2003
Making Techniques and Expression Indivisible
Too often the groves of academe and the world of performance are mutually unsympathetic rather than complementary, but with the great scholar-pianist Rosalyn Tureck they are both championed and reconciled in a fruitful interaction of active and contemplative attitude and abilities.
Bryce Morrison BBC LEGEND, Nov.2002
BACH: THE WELL-TEMPERED CLAVIER (DG 463 305-2GH)
A Classic Recording by a Great Artist (Five stars-highest ranking)
"Epoch-making" is an overuses description, but for some of us Rosalyn Tureck's first recording of Bach's "48", completed in 1953, was just that. There was, and is, none quite like her.
Adrian Jack, Classic CD, February 2000
Here is cause for celebration, first of enterprise, secondly of what Tureck in her trenchant and dazzling notes, calls the past, present and future bible of Western music and, thirdly, a performance of matchless wit, musical grace and eloquence. Here is playing as vivid and life affirming as any on record, a magical interaction of scholarship and imaginative brio... Skillfully remastered, lavishly illustrated and annotated, of such work is beyond price, deserving, in the words of that most august publication The Record Guide, 'a heavenful stars'.
Bryce Morrison Gramophone, February 2000
Five Stars (Highest Ranking)
This is five hours of the most impressive and inspirational Bach playing you are ever likely to hear, full of wisdom and immaculate musicianship in her superb notes, Tureck discusses the need for research "to be fused with intuition, imagination and experience"- a neat summation of her approach to this most challenging of composers.
Andrew Clarke, The Scotsman, January 2000
Rosalyn Tureck's Bach playing is legendary, and the performances here show that her keyboard command and fluent sense of Bach style are as remarkable as ever. Highest rating: Three stars plus Rosette.
International Penguin Guide, 1991 through 2001
BACH: GOLDBERG VARIATIONS (DG 459 599-2GH2)
Five Stars (excellent-highest rating)
Rosalyn Tureck is by way of being a living monument... the personality other playing is captivating, her technique is secure and unquestionable: the artist's instinct is supreme.
Alexander Pham, Goldberg, June 1999
Rosalyn Tureck-the Meridan
The American pianist releases an historic recording of the Goldberg Variations. There are exceptional recordings marking musical history with their white stone, and there are others, even rarer, which draw there their meridian: a line crossed over by such a thing that nothing will ever again be as before. These Goldberg Variations are one of those.
Marie-Aude Roux, Le Monde, 13/02/99, Paris
Rosalyn Tureck in the gardens of J.S. Bach
An album which assuredly joins the ranks of the most precious
in the great record collections.
The result is a shining exploration of the innumerable possibilities
offered by Bach: the majestic entrance of the first variation, the
brave sharp notes of the fourth, the ornamental refinements of the
seventh, the impenetrable sweetness of the fifteenth, the fascinating
and visionary sarabande on the twenty-fifth.
Each variation has it life, perfectly autonomous, but attached to
a whole from which one would not know to detach it.
Perhaps it is the privilege of a great age, but such an intensity
of emotion has never, I believe, been heard.
Remy Loury, Midi Lebre, 18/02/99, Paris
Goldberg Variations-The Fifth
The carefully-edited CD offers every computer-owner with a CD-ROM
player the additional CD-plus-score-the possibility of following
Tureck's edition of the score next to her analytical comments on
the screen, and of calling up further information and pictorial
information on Bach's life and works, as well as on the career of
the artist.
The actual achievement remains the music, however. The energetic
strength other playing does not merely declare itself through the
realm of nuances other touch, nor through the strictness other performance,
nor through a rhythm chiseled as though swinging, nor through her
polyphonic kingdom. This strength comes from the sum of a life of
artistry filled with experiences. What is convincing about Tureck's
playing is that human surplus value, which is freed through this
great knowledge. Rosalyn Tureck has brought back through her
playing that which is most often bemoaned as lost in today's
civilization: time.
Frank Siebert, TAZ (Germany), 30/01/99
Rosalyn Tureck, from the Other Side of Bach
Rosalyn Tureck has just created an event by recording her first record for Deutsche Grammophon. As a result, people are currently hurrying into the theatres of Europe... to hear the woman through whom the truth about Bach happens.
Eric Danan, Liberation, 04/03/99,Paris
Rosalyn Tureck stands beside Casals, Landowska, in her definitive solo work in Bach. She has monumental greatness in her recorded discography... the refined exactitude of her expression exceeds any performance standard one might choose by other interpreters alive or dead.
Donald Morris, www.jsbach.org, 09/08/99
Once having heard Rosalyn Tureck play Bach- or any other composer, for that matter-you can never forget it... this disc gloriously confirms her mastery.
Adrian Jack, Classic CD, February 1999
Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier. Rosalyn Tureck (piano)
A complete recording of the "Forty-Eight" serves as a reminder of what a tremendous work it is, occupying as it does twelve long-playing twelve-inch sides. Simply to play it complete is an achievement and to play it so magnificently as Rosalyn Tureck is phenomenal.
Arthur Dennington, The Strad, May 1955
Miss Tureck's Bach Recital, Edinburgh, September 1st
It is not possible to exaggerate the artistic value of her performance.
Frank Howe, The Times, London, 2 September 1955
Rosalyn Tureck's Bach Recital, Royal Festival Hall
The Preludes and Fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier were a lesson to Bach aspirants in the big house on how things should be done.
Percy Cater, Daily Mail, London, May 1964
"Rosalyn Tureck - High Priestess of Bach"
Harold Schonberg, N.Y. Times, 1960
One of the most discerning interpreters of Bach in the world today.
The Times, London, 5/10/1954
CANADIAN VOICES - 1995
"A pianist considered by some the greatest in the world"...
James Strecker