It’s not easy to explain why one likes one performance of a work better than another, but two recent purchases have set me thinking about it. One of these I bought because I heard part of it on the radio and recognized some music I had struggled to play long ago, Bach’s Inventionen und Sinfonien. The performer was Till Fellner (ECM New Series). These pieces were written as exercises and don’t get performed all that much by professional pianists. But I always thought the ones I tried to play were really exciting music—if only I could have played them better. This is hardly surprising, of course, from a composer who could turn something as formal as a fugue into a transcendent experience.

Patrick White described the effect: “The organ lashed together the bars of music until there was a whole shining scaffolding of sound. And always the golden ladders rose, extended and extended, as if to reach the window of a fire. But there was no fire, only bliss, surging and rising. . . ” (Riders in the Chariot, chapter 9). The little Inventionen and Sinfonien don’t reach that high, but they find great range among the lesser human emotions, from sadness to peaceful content to a somewhat bumptious jollity. Fellner communicates all that.

This isn’t a matter of sentimentality. When Bach is played in an effort to evoke a particular emotion, it usually doesn’t work very well. On the other hand, Bach played only as a technical exercise or a demonstration of virtuosity can be tedious. How to describe the middle ground? I suppose it is a matter of performing with an awareness that the music does convey emotion and a willing cooperation with that. I’m not sure this is very clear or helpful, but it comes close to what I was hearing in Fellner’s performance of these “student” pieces—and of the Fifth French Suite that completes the album.

I think the complex structure of Bach’s music has sometimes been treated by modern tastes as equivalent to abstraction in the visual arts—the submergence of recognizable subject matter into pure form. But it’s hard for me to imagine that any Baroque music is truly divorced from emotion. It was an era fascinated by temperament and its accompanying emotions. Handel’s L’Allegro, il Pensoroso, ed il Moderato is a sterling example with its complex representation of the sanguine and melancholic temperaments. Even the turning away from them in the closing duet, which hails the advent of Moderation and the restoration of “intellectual day,” is full of deeply felt relief. (The poetry in that duet is lame, but the music may be the most stirringly beautiful Handel ever wrote.)

The other recording I purchased recently is Alexander Melnikov’s performance of Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues (Harmonia Mundi), written two centuries after Bach but inspired by his Preludes and Fugues. This is—very unusually for me— the fourth recording of this work that I have owned. I don’t often acquire multiple versions, but I have an odd history with this work.

My first exposure to it was an LP with selections of the preludes and fugues performed by Shostakovich himself. I fell in love with them—not so odd for me, as I’m a sucker for fugues in general. After reaching a time when I no longer played LPs, I decided to look for a CD. My old recording was not then available in that format (though it now is) and I bought one by Tatiana Nikolaeva (Melodiya). It seemed the obvious choice, since she was regarded as the work’s great interpreter.

But I was disappointed. The pieces were beautifully played, but rather bland. I missed the wry sense of humor that animated Shostakovich’s own playing, the humanity he gave the pieces. I found that I seldom played my new purchase. When Keith Jarrett’s recording (ECM New Series) came out to great acclaim, I bought that. Much better, to my tastes. The music felt more transparent, more varied, less like a museum piece. But it still felt to me as if the humanity of the work was obscured.

After reading reviews of Melnikov’s recording, I debated for about a year whether I wanted to try again. I’m very glad I did. His performance has all the human vitality of Shostakovich’s own. Not that he imitates Shostakovich’s performance. The pieces I knew from the old LP sound quite fresh and distinct in his performance. But they convey an overall sense of the joys and sorrows, the dangers, stupidities, wonders, and even comedy of human life—perhaps intensified by the environment of the Stalinist era—transmuted into the abstract forms of prelude and fugue and waiting to be awakened and retranslated into a non-verbal message for heart and mind together.

Messrs. Fellner and Melnikov have accidentally united to give me new delight in music that I have long loved. Forgive my unseemly exuberance if I respond with an Amen! Hallelujah!