make a personal statement
バッハの演奏にあたっては様々な解釈が可能です。個人的にはグレン・グールドの解釈による個性的な演奏が気に入っています。現代のピアノによる演奏が無限の可能性を見せてくれたことが最大の理由です。ともあれ彼の解釈は現代のピアニストにも多大な影響を及ぼしました。
赤字の部分のpersonal statementは「個人的見解」です。さらには大学院などの受験に際して提出する「志望動機」、公の機関に出す「自己申告（書）」などの意味があります。
make a personal statementという形では「個人的な見解を述べる」という意味ですが、記事ではoffer a chance to make~という形の中で、さらにhighlyが付いていますので、「ピアニストに（自由度の）高いそれぞれの作品解釈をする機会を与える」と、とらえることができると思います。
CD等でピアニストそれぞれの個性が強く現れるバッハの演奏を聞けば、ある程度の「耳」ができると、誰が弾いているか実は容易にわかるようになります。これはちょうど先生が英語を少し聞かれただけでどこのアクセントかお当てになるあの「技」と似ています。(Minnesota)
THE pianist Angela Hewitt, a wonderful Bach interpreter, once said that the greatest compliment about her playing had come from her father, who said: “I didn’t hear you. I only heard Bach.”
Bach’s music offers pianists a chance to make a highly personal statement. Such a wide variety of interpretations has been offered in recent years that it seems there is hardly a standard performance anymore, as there might be for a Chopin nocturne or a Beethoven sonata.
Some have taken the personalization to extremes, with exaggerated nuances and excessively slow tempos that mar the dance pulse. But Ms. Hewitt, Andras Schiff and Minsoo Sohn combine distinctive ideas with exquisite taste in their performances and recordings.
I can’t think of a better way to inaugurate the new season than by listening to these three artists perform Bach. Mr. Sohn kicks off the Bach extravaganza with the “Goldberg” Variations at Zankel Hall on Oct. 6; his program also features Webern’s Variations (Op. 27) and Brahms’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel (Op. 24). Mr. Sohn, the Korean-born winner of the 2006 Honens International Piano Competition in Calgary, Alberta, recently offered a poetic and radiant interpretation of the “Goldberg” Variations on the Honens label.
When Ms. Hewitt made her debut recording on Deutsche Grammophon in 1985, she was told by label executives that there was no market for Bach on the piano. Ms. Hewitt, who has since recorded all of Bach’s major keyboard works for Hyperion — demonstrating crystalline articulation, singing lines and rhythmic vitality — will present her take on the same Bach masterpiece on Oct. 28 at Le Poisson Rouge. She will be continuing an old tradition: much of Bach’s instrumental music was first performed at Zimmermann’s coffeehouse in Leipzig, Germany.
Yet no discussion of exemplary interpretations of Bach on the piano could be complete without mentioning Mr. Schiff, long admired for his soulful, joyous and immaculate renditions.
Happily for New York audiences, he will perform Bach’s complete “Well-Tempered Clavier” at the 92nd Street Y this fall, offering Book 1 on Oct. 27 and Book 2 on Nov. 1.
These concerts inaugurate Mr. Schiff’s multiseason Bach Project, which will feature solo and orchestral performances in various cities. For those not lucky enough to hear him live, ECM is releasing a recording of his “Well-Tempered Clavier” this month.
