Bach Recording Recommendations

Everything I mention here is a recommendation.

There are two well-known Starker recordings of the suites. The one that gets audiophile attention is the Mercury. I prefer the one on RCA, both for sound and for musicality. The recent Thedeen recording in BIS is also great musically and in nice sound. Pieter Wispelway has a different approach on period instruments.

The Bach Collegium Japan series of cantatas on BIS is marvelous.

The Goldberg Variations - if you like harpsichord, the Pierre Hantai earlier recording on Opus 111. The later one on Mirare is also very good, but I do recommend the earlier one. On piano, consider Ekaterina Dershavina or Andrew Rangell. Gould of course is a standard recommendation, though I find the sound faded and the playing overly mannered.

Piotr Anderszewski has a new CD with selections from the Well-Tempered Clavier. This is beautifully thought out and played, and I found it a lot more interesting than other versions of WTC I’ve heard.


Several good complete organ editions. Chapuis is very free and enjoyable musically, but the sound can be a little shrill in places. I also like the set by Marie-Clair Alain. And for less Bach on organ, the series by Anthony Newman on Newport Classic, though old, is still highly worthwhile.
There is much more of Bach, but I’ll stop there.
P.S. If you find something of Bach you really like, don’t hesitate to explore more than one interpretation. The music lends itself to differing visions, and it’s quite possible to love more than one.

https://www.discogs.com/Bach-Richard-Galliano-Bach/release/2988876

also

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bach:_Sonatas_and_Partitas,_Vol._1. 

and 

https://www.discogs.com/Various-Red-Hot-Bach/release/8746053

Bach Piano Transcriptions — Vikingur Olafsson

Wonderful playing and sound.

Bach violin concertos by Grumiaux whose violin sound there was never surpassed for me....Grumiaux is one of the top violonist beside the very few , not for absolute virtuosity like Haifetz but for his sense of hues and colors pertaining to only him and his instrument and the controlled lyricism of Oistrakh.... Try him in Vivaldi or Mozart....Same thing....Mediterranean sun set or dawning sun on strings for a Belgian Artist who is born away from the Mediterranean sea.... What is the enigma?

This Bach is one of my favorite musical files for 50 years because of the luminous joy emanating from it....
The second one also for deepest reason....

Sonatas and partitas for violin by Szeryng, the MONO 1954 version, not the stereo one, is my other one....Here the violonist go deep in the spiritual abyss of the infinite.... It is NO MORE virtuosity....NONE other is so moving and incredibly profound.... I listen to more "beautiful" sound others version but none compared at all even the second Szering version i sold on the spot after buying it, so good it was compared to some others violonist, it is not at all on the same level of the first version....

I tried all other versions....If not all, most.... Even Milstein extraordinary mastership impress on the same level but moves way less...The marmorean Milstein version is perfection total, a pure sculpture like the Madona with Christ of Michelangelo.... But Szeryng plays like if he was in the face of God, nude and dying... No over viruosity traces left....Only a heart beating and remembering to himself how to play only by feeling no more by habit....This is one of the greatest recording existing in music....I must make an effort to name only one other on the SAME spiritual level....But i will not go there in this post.... I read that "when Artur Rubinstein first heard Szeryng play Bach, he was reduced to tears and begged to become Szeryng’s accompanist." You will beg to listen it many times on the future to come....It is this files i want to listen before dying.... Nothing else will do.....

Thanks for all the responses guys!  Lots of good info here!