On track: Bach's Variations radiate from the piano keyboards

By WILLIAM DART

Bach on the piano is still a vexed issue for some, but Andras Schiff's scrumptious new recording of the Goldberg Variations would almost suggest they had been written for his Bosendorfer. More remarkable still is that it is a concert recording, caught in Basel two years ago.

A handsome CD booklet is graced by a Vikram Seth poem praising the pianist ("Dear Andras, in your natural art," it runs, "one thing rings through the varied air - the urge to sing".) And Bach's intertwining lines do just that, with an almost romantic ardour in Variation 9.

In his own liner notes, Schiff sees himself as a guide "for one of the few journeys that can be repeated again and again". He is sometimes academic - tongue-in-cheek perhaps when he describes Variation 1 as a "dance of complementary dactyls and anapests". Elsewhere he is whimsical - "Try to sing Ha-Ha-Ha on the opening semiquavers," he advises with Variation 23.

And well one might laugh, such is the giddy exhilaration of it all, if one wasn't gasping at the flawless part-playing, just as the rightness and inventiveness of the ornamentation often brings a smile to the face.

This is a fine recording Goldberg enthusiasts will not want to be without, as well as being the perfect introduction for the uninitiated.

Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt delivered her Goldberg CD four years ago. Working through Bach's catalogue for almost a decade, she has now come to the six Suites of BWV 806-811, works that are English in name but cosmopolitan in style.

A less forceful artist than Schiff, Hewitt can still balance the architectural (the expansive D minor Prelude) with filigree (the A minor Sarabande, presented with telling rubato).

She rings changes with the simplest dances (the G minor Gavottes) by keen articulation and unexpected phrasing, and every inflection is cherished in this immaculate Hyperion studio recording.

While tempi are on the whole gentle and giving, the E minor Prelude is a few degrees too frantic for textural comfort, although the Gigue from the same Suite is a positive treat as it hurtles through the sort of discords that call out for a Webern transcription.

Bach on the piano? These two releases would convert the most ardent non-believer.

* Andras Schiff, Bach: Goldberg Variations (ECM 1825); Angela Hewitt, Bach: The English Suites (Hyperion CDA 67451/2). Both CDs available through Ode Records.