If you prefer Bach on the piano served up in heaping Romantic portions, accompanied by dollops of creamy tone, tapered phrases and languishing tenutos, Edna Stern's ravishing pianism will turn your ears to jelly. Few modern pianists can pull off this approach, but Stern's sincerity, conviction and masterful control of the instrument prove utterly disarming. Her wide array of legato pedallings in the Busoni and Brahms choral prelude arrangements spill over into a selection of Preludes and Fugues from TheWell-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, without ever obscuring the profile and direction of Bach's contrapuntal lines. Her unpressured fluidity in the F minor Fugue is a case in point. Likewise, the A major Fugue's cross-rhythmic phrases take on a curvaceous, playful character, while the B flat major Prelude's arpeggiated patterns unsystematically alternate between blurry and dry. Stern's rubato in the E minor Fugue dismantles the work's toccata-like drive, as if Pablo Casals's cello bow was guiding her fingers. And in contrast to more overtly virtuoso, incisive renditions of the G major Prelude and Fugue, Stern relaxes within her chosen fast tempi. Perhaps her ordering the programme according to key relationships explains how easily each work slips into the next. In short, a disc that will cause unrepentant pianophiles to jump for joy while historically informed performance mavens duck for cover.

If you prefer Bach on the piano served up in heaping Romantic portions, accompanied by dollops of creamy tone, tapered phrases and languishing tenutos, Edna Stern's ravishing pianism will turn your ears to jelly. …a disc that will cause unrepentant pianophiles to jump for joy while historically informed performance mavens duck for cover.