Brilliant Bach
Paul Riley applauds Murray Perahia’s dapper French Suites
JS BACH
French Suites
Murray Perahia (piano)
Deutsche Grammophon 479 6565
91:39 mins (2 discs)
Bach’s French Suites might seem an unusual choice to mark Murray Perahia’s signing to the Yellow Label. Outwardly unprepossessing, for many they are overshadowed by their feistier English Suite cousins. But how could it be otherwise? Perahia has already recorded so many Bachian big-hitters – the Goldberg Variations and Partitas among them – during his time with Sony Classical that there are few Everests left to climb. There is, though, one glaring not to say intriguing lacuna: The Welltempered Clavier. Yet so joyously conceived, so full of insights is this Deutsche Grammophon French Suites debut, it proves to be a decidedly auspicious one after all.
The English Suites and keyboard Partitas can’t help but engender a certain heft: it’s hardwired into music that experiments with concerto-style brio and indulges in lavishly embellished elaborations almost at the drop of a hat. Half of the Sarabandes gracing the English Suites are paired with opulent ‘Doubles’, and the A major’s second Courante boasts two, no less.
The challenge with the French Suites (1722-25), at any rate when they’re played on the piano, is to avoid making them sound too effete. That’s especially true for a pianist of Perahia’s instantly recognisable translucency and dapper disposition.
He sidesteps the risk with aplomb. The Gigue of the C minor Suite
No. 2 buzzes like a wasp trapped in a jam jar, and there’s no lack of muscular resolution in the Suite
No. 4 in E flat major’s Gigue, or its French-style D minor counterpart (Suite No. 1) – played with crisp, spiky, incisively-etched hauteur to the manner born.
Perahia is unrivalled in coaxing a subtle dialogue in the dances that resort to the artful paredback minimalism of the two-part
Murray Perahia is unrivalled in coaxing a subtle dialogue
invention. There’s nowhere to hide, and Perahia’s effortless variety of touch, love of teasing voice-leading, and conversational affability would have it no other way.
His tempos feel exactly right; he never overloads the Sarabandes with an import inappropriate to their setting, and the saucy twinkle of the G major Gavotte (No. 5) is emblematic of a set whose galanterien unfailingly scintillate.
All three major key French Suites harbour a Gavotte; the E flat sports two. Perahia ensures that somehow each aspires to more than the sum of its aristocratic parts. Even the rhythmically idiosyncratic Loure from the G major Suite dodges the potential bullet of sounding gauche and emerges here uncommonly natural and unaffected.
The recorded sound will be a touch over-resonant for some tastes, but this is a set that gets ever more persuasive on repeated listening.
Let’s hope Deutsche Grammophon can persuade Perahia to break his silence on The Welltempered Clavier. And soon.