Andrew Johnstone reviews a performance of Bach's Art of Fugue

Proud, Smith

St Ann's Church, Dublin

Andrew Johnstone

Bach's Art of Fugue can be played on a wide variety of instruments, and has been recorded by groups ranging from viol consort to saxophone quartet. But Malcolm Proud's version for harpsichord had more than just a ring of truth to it.

Aided in two movements by Gillian Smith on second harpsichord, this was Proud's first ever public performance of the work. It honoured the late John O'Sullivan, continuo player of the St Ann's Bach cantata concerts from 1972 to 1982, and himself an exponent of the Art of Fugue.

It isn't often you hear music interpreted with such consideration as this. From the overall impression created by the selection and ordering of movements right down to the finest details of touch and rubato, Proud left nothing to chance.

He began with the sequence of 14 pieces from Bach's original manuscript copy, incorporating revisions from the re-ordered, posthumously printed first edition.

He ended with three of the four pieces found only in the print, omitting the fugue that Bach famously left unfinished.

The effect of juxtaposing movements usually heard in isolation was exactly as predicted in Proud's programme notes: gradually, the intensity concentrated and then rarefied.

Not that there were any less-than-intense moments. The opening, unadorned announcement of Bach's theme was so sculpted that it seemed to encapsulate all the ensuing music. Its every reappearance was marked, though never obtrusively.

Rhythms - always precise, never mechanical - had the quality of infectious onomatopoeia. With every slowing-down or speeding-up came the certainty that the music was going somewhere new, and that you were going there with it.

And each movement's final chord, whether plainly or decoratively played, seemed to confirm absolutely the sense of a definitive statement.