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Reviewer: Marc Rochester The star of the show here is the mighty Walcker organ of Riga Cathedral. It makes a fabulous noise; especially a stunningly balanced full organ which exudes awesome power, the 32-foot reed sounding like some gigantic jet about to take to the air. Yet, even given this vivid recording, it is by no means overwhelming. Which is just as well, for Russian organist Elena Privalova rarely moves away from full organ in this programme of Bach toccatas. She finds something softer for the Adagio of BWV564 and roots out a few gentler tones for the episodes of BWV566, but otherwise this a programme in which assertive, ironclad organ tone is deployed unsparingly. I find it mildly surprising that she acknowledges the help of an ‘organ assistant’; what on earth did the assistant find to do other than pull out that 32-foot pedal reed? It is not just nuances of registration that Elena Privalova avoids but also nuances of interpretation. One listens in vain for the merest whisper of articulation subtlety, coherent musical phrasing or ornamentation, and her rigidly mechanical rhythmic momentum is relieved only at the very end of BWV565 when, with heartstopping pauses and lavish rallentandos, she seems to be atoning for the total absence of these things elsewhere in the programme. But I suspect there is a reason for playing Bach in a way that pays no heed to any of those dangerously revolutionary ideas about Bachian authenticity that raised their ugly heads during the latter half of the 20th century. The Riga Walcker was built in the 1880s and opened by Liszt in 1884, and it seems that Privalova is trying to rekindle the kind of monumentally muscular Bach-playing of that era. If that was her intention, she has succeeded brilliantly, and I, for one, am happy just to sit back and luxuriate in this fabulously muscular sound, while suspending any of my Bachian sensitivities.
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