In The Art of Fugue, “Bach plays to God and himself in an empty church”, the critic and composer Wilfrid Mellers memorably wrote. The sequence of 20 fugues and canons, grouped according to the contrapuntal devices they employ, remains one of the most enigmatic works in the history of western music, not only left unfinished at Bach’s death in 1750, with its final fugue incomplete, but also lacking any indications as to how it might be played.
It’s widely accepted now Bach really intended The Art of Fugue as a keyboard work, but Ottavio Dantone thinks otherwise. Some of the fugues, he writes, are impossible to play as written on a harpsichord. Instead, he opts for an ensemble of string quartet, harpsichord and organ, dividing the numbers between the instruments in a very skilful and effective way – the use of the two keyboards together, for instance, is unexpectedly striking. There is no attempt to complete the final fugue, which is left hanging in midair, and that is just about the only musical phrase in the entire performance that isn’t perfectly shaped.
