Nelson Freire plays Bach
Drive Discovery, starting 29 February 2016 after 6pm.
The Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire brings a lifetime’s experience (he started playing when he was three) to his first-ever album devoted to the music of J.S Bach.
Recorded during the pianist’s 70th birthday year in 2014, the album provides a superb overview of Bach's works played on the piano, from towering original works such as the Fourth Partita or the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, through to a selection of transcriptions.
In lyrical mood, as in his version of Myra Hess's arrangement of Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, Freire's Bach is soft, flowing and atmospheric; elsewhere, especially in the Chromatic Fantasy, his fingerwork is dazzlingly fast, accurate and pin-sharp in its attack.
