This was a Quora question. Actually the verbatim question was "What other pianists are there who play Bach similarly to Gould? i.e. quite detached and rhythmic (no rubato)". So I offered an answer:

No one plays similarly to Gould, so let’s clear that up straightaway — if by “similarly to Gould” you mean with a combination of swinging musicality and keen precision unlike anyone on the world stage before him (with the possible exception of his teacher, Alberto Guerrero). I’d dispute your “no rubato” idea, but I’ll take it as shorthand for his unprecedented attention to rhythmic detail. 

However, there is one guy out there who plays with a /much more/ pronounced detaché and accent: the Finnish player (and former student of the great Ralf Gothóni): Olli Mustonen. There is no one who plays like him either! He’s got a fair lot of Bach in his rep, so you can get a sense of the differences (or similarities, if you like) between him and Gould. I don’t think of it that way, personally, but simply and needlessly to say I like them both very, very much. If you haven’t heard him, I encourage you to do so.

Takahiro Yoshikawa is a piano player from Nishinomiya, Japan who released last year (2017) on the Ypsilon International label a very standard Debussy program: the Bergamasque, Estampes, both books of Images. But the playing is unique for the repertoire. And very enjoyable to my ear, not only for its novelty, which is remarkable, but too many players, to the point of stereotype, seem to have a built-in aversion to pairing Debussy with clarity. Not so Mr Yoshikawa. The playing has all the loveliness it needs without automatic over-pedaling. I cannot think of anyone other than, perhaps on occasion, Gieseking, possibly Michelangeli, with anything like a similar approach. And lest anyone think perhaps his foot is broken, he can certainly depress the sustain: cf. Estampes, though, to repeat, appropriately and without heaviness. Rather than trying to impress with the evenness of harmonic arpeggiation, the ending of Pagodes is slowed and articulated, bringing a whole new sense of attention to the coda. Additionally, while I enjoy a whirlwind tempo in Debussy as much as the next guy, it’s not always necessary. The Passapied here, for example, is played with delicacy and restraint which, paradoxically, gives it power and strength. I won’t go into an analysis of each work, but overall simply to say it is worth many listens and a wide audience. I’ll provide the former and hope for a more perfect world that makes possible the latter.

I am not the greatest fan of the pastiche recording: the Greatest Hits of Paganini, My Favorite Debussy, and the like. But everything old is new again, and I’ve found one I enjoy from I player I’ve never heard of before. 

The album is not new, 2007, and neither is the player: Olga Plats. But I’ve never heard of her before, not that that means anything. Born in 1938 in Portugal, her career seems dominated by both teaching and chamber music performance. Then out comes this album of individual, small works, many of them well-known to the general ear. A Gavotte here, a Sarabande there, a Liszt Réve, a Shostakovich Prelude, a Brahms variation, a mote of Mompou, and what is becoming a perennial favorite if you go by the number of players who program it these days: the Berio Wasserklavier. Anyway, you get the idea. Or do you? Do I? I don’t think so! But I like it anyway! (She even includes a bit of Chick Corea… c’mon now.) 

The answer may lie in an accompanying book. Actually, I cannot tell if the book came first and then the music, or the music followed by the book, or both together, or some other chrono-combo. They share a title. The book is a series of interviews or conversations with one Sérgio Azevedo (a composer, obviously, who is represented on this disc with a two-piano tango and waltz). I have not read the book but welcome anyone who has done so to enlighten me. 

The album, with a completely different cover and design from the book (and a most delightful album cover it is; I cannot find a worthy resolution to include, otherwise I’d publish it above), is available wherever fine music is streamed. Its distinction is, perhaps, modest. (Although the voice inclusion under/over the Schumann Kinderszenen and a few other works I find most fetching.) Still I recommend it wholeheartedly, especially for these summer afternoons in our strange, changing world: cool and warm all at once.

I’ve had the album *Dualità* in my queue for some months but just getting around to listening to it, in part. The playing is not particularly distinguished or distinctive, but it’s listenable enough. What makes the album worth putting on the table, perhaps, is the programming. It’s fragmented, to be sure, opening with a mere movement from the Messiaen vingt regards, multiple interjections of the player’s own work, multiple iterations of Glass etudes, and so forth. In other words, with the exception of a complete offering by Gorecki, a potpourri. He seems to have done much the same with his first album, Oscillations. So that’s fine, it all hangs together well enough. And the serviceable playing doesn’t get in the way of the umbrella idea which is… what exactly? I don’t know. The duality idea means something, possibly. A clue to the intellectual project. There is a brief verbal monologue about midway through the program spoken by a woman (Nita Klein) in French. It is titled “le gibet” and precedes Ravel’s famous work of the same name. But I find no answers here. Instead, presumably the preface to a concert recital of these same pieces (minus the monologue), Mr Bassa tells us: 

« Dualitá » est la fusion de 17 pièces, dont cinq de ma composition, nées d’une seule énergie créant l’unité. Inspiré de mon premier album « Oscillations »,  j’ai souhaité explorer ma nature créative face à la dissonance des éléments opposés et complémentaires qui représentent la dualité. 

« Le regard du Père » d’Olivier Messiaen ouvre ce concert. Le Thème de Dieu place l’homme face à l’immensité de l’univers et aux questions que l’inconnu provoque en lui ; « Kleinstücke »,  ma première composition, essaie d’y répondre. « Santa Fe » nous surprend avec son mouvement circulaire qui oscille entre l’inquiétude  de l’être et son désir ; la vie se met en marche. La sonate de Gorecki, œuvre centrale d’une frénésie éclatante, installe la division et la lutte des contraires qui se métamorphose en chaos. 

Le Gibet, extrait de « Gaspard de la nuit » de Maurice Ravel (inspiré par le poème d’Aloysius Bertrand), ouvre la deuxième partie du disque avec le thème de la mort. C’est dans ce désespoir  qu’arrive « Réminiscence », comme une réconciliation entre l’ombre et la lumière.  Une sérénité inquiétante encore traversée par l’effroi se déploie dans « Eternità ». 

Ma dernière composition « Into the rush », exprime avec espoir et force les états d’âme vécus jusqu’à maintenant et la perpétuelle recherche d’un équilibre pour atteindre la non-dualité qui demeure en nous : notre vraie nature. 

So the big idea is unity, fusion. OK. There you go.

Well I don’t know if she has or not but she’s certainly doing something very lovely and I don’t care whether it’s an innovation or not. From Medici, here is the blurb: 

Hélène Grimaud transforms the genre of the recital, integrating a performance of solo piano works by Romantic and Impressionist composers with a multimedia experience. Her recital is interwoven with the recorded music of composer Nitin Sawhney, and set against the backdrop of visual artist Mat Hennek’s photography. The film presented here takes the live experience to the next level by interpreting the original performance through the birds-eye view of the filmmakers, more directly connecting the viewer with the artists and their creations. 

By giving full weight to the visual interjections (“transitions” they call them here), it brings to my mind something that is vital to the live experience. As I’ve long ago encountered and answered the question, via Gould, what is added in the event of live performance? Other than obviously a great majority (we must assume) of performers prefer it to the studio for the *joie de schwing* it brings to their playing, the human connection and all that booshwha. Well, unless (maybe) it’s a great grand orchestra in a great hall with three full choirs, my answer is: nothing. Or unless your only home sound source is a pocket radio (and with today’s technology even that doesn’t necessarily mean the sound is flat or tinny). I will grant the sanctification of the studied moment, the expressly non-multithreaded focus on an experience (never absolute, but intentional and respectful of the work and yourself), and grant too that this is not the same as putting on background music while you work at other tasks. But the theatre Ms Grimaud is staging here is of a different order, subtly, one that increases the spectacle while decreasing the spectacular. Sea change? Probably not. But she’s bringing the century-and-a-half old form into territory occupied mostly by newer music performance formats and, whatever the Hamburgers in the Elbphilharmonie might have thought, I think it’s delightful.