Pianist Andrew Rangell really knows how to program a recital. Take, for example, this 2005 recording of keyboard works by J. S. Bach. First there's the tiny and adorable Little Prelude in A minor, then there's the gnarly and imponderable Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, the rare and sublime Praeludium in G major, the imposing and amusing French Overture, the slender and serene Little Prelude in D major, and, finally, as the piece de resistance, the immensely virtuostic and instantly memorable Italian Concerto. It's a program ...
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Pianist Andrew Rangell really knows how to program a recital. Take, for example, this 2005 recording of keyboard works by J. S. Bach. First there's the tiny and adorable Little Prelude in A minor, then there's the gnarly and imponderable Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, the rare and sublime Praeludium in G major, the imposing and amusing French Overture, the slender and serene Little Prelude in D major, and, finally, as the piece de resistance, the immensely virtuostic and instantly memorable Italian Concerto. It's a program that's much more than the sum of its parts, a program with its own structural flow and its overarching rhythm. Rangell, in addition to having a first-class technique, has a keen intellect plus emotional focus and an almost unbearable interpretive intensity, and he creates wholly persuasive performances of pieces long familiar and pieces hardly ever heard. In the exquisite Little Preludes, Rangell floats ineffable lines through transparent harmonies in ineluctable rhythms at exactly the...
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