(++++) A LIFE WELL PLAYED

Life and Music: A Memoir. By Idil Biret with Dominique Xardel. Chestnut Hill Press. $35. 

     Autobiographies are awkward things: unbelievable when self-effacing, irritating when self-aggrandizing, prone to the triple temptation to become, at various points, maudlin, self-congratulatory and unduly modest. The flaws of the form come through with remarkable consistency, for, as Idil Biret points out in a different context, “Really, nothing reinvents itself.” 

     And right there is one way in which the aptly titled Life and Music stands out: Biret (born 1941) has thoughts that, ostensibly about music, are in fact about life both in and beyond the area to which she has devoted so many decades and in which she has produced so many literally noteworthy performances. 

     Much of this book is a translation by Gunesh Guran Gery of a work originally published 20 years ago in French and not previously available in English. That work, Une pianist turque en France, was built around conversations – in the form of exchanges of correspondence – between Biret and Dominique Xardel (born 1934), who among other things was editor-in-chief of the French version of Harvard Business Review. And there are indeed elements of the business of music discussed here, including a notorious and still-debated “Biret boycott” resulting from traditional record labels metaphorically “circling the wagons” to protect their turf (and profits) when Biret was making recordings for the then-upstart, then-budget label Naxos. But business is scarcely the primary focus of the book, and indeed, in a curious way, Biret herself is not the focus – certainly not the entirety of it. That is because so much of what Biret discusses with Xardel uses her experiences, and music itself, as jumping-off points for contemplation of and commentary on broader and wider issues. 

     Biret’s thinking is often expressed through startling observations – or, perhaps more accurately, in startling commentary about trenchant observations: “The pianistic concept has evolved a lot, often at random, since the 1960s, a decade that in many ways was still part of the nineteenth century. Since then the compositions are at the mercy of the interpreters and not the other way around as it generally should be. The large egos of today’s interpreters are offensive to the fragility of the well-known works of composers who could never have imagined such a change.” Notions born of experience and worthy of much further contemplation are packed into that half paragraph – about the 1960s, about the balance between composer and performer, about the “fragility” of traditional piano repertoire. Whether a reader agrees with Biret or not, her insights provoke nearly as much surprise and thought when verbalized as they do when communicated via the piano. 

     It is of course necessary to have some familiarity with classical music to appreciate Biret’s place in it, and some basic knowledge about repertoire and well-known performers to share fully in the perspectives that Biret offers. Life and Music is not a full-fledged biography, but there is enough background information in it to allow the casual reader, one not thoroughly versed in the ins and outs of the concert-music world, to understand Biret’s place in the pianistic firmament and to appreciate her often remarkably penetrating insights. Again and again, she challenges conventional wisdom in her words as she often does in her performances: “It seems to me that even now we have a romantic, a wrong idea of what a ‘career’ or a ‘reputation’ means.” But again and again, Life and Music shows the tremendous solidity on which Biret’s own career and reputation rest: the 80 photographs bound into the center of the book, arranged chronologically from 1946 to 2020, directly display her interactions with family, with the leadership of her native Turkey, and with some of the great performers and teachers with whom she has interacted throughout her long and distinguished career. 

     Readers interested in the mundane aspects of professional performance will find Biret’s thinking especially intriguing. “The sitting position permits proper breathing comfortably as long as you do not stoop. …You have to watch carefully for any signs of arthritis, follow a healthy diet, take vitamins, especially antioxidants. Do not smoke, drink lots of water and, once in a while, a glass of wine…” There is something rather charming in those remarks. And there is always a surprising or unexpected thought lurking on a nearby page: “I think it’s a good idea not to work with first-rate pianos, not to get used to the beautiful sound of an instrument. It’s more interesting to try to get a good sound from a mediocre piano.” 

     It is because Biret is an intermediary, an interpreter putting her creativity at the service of the creativity of others – of the composers whose work she creates and re-creates – that her thoughts, even when personal, resonate beyond herself, so that the focus of Life and Music is not the usual narrow one found in a book whose professed topic is a single individual. Indeed, Biret returns repeatedly to the theme – more of a theme and variations – of music as an art and music within the arts. Her thinking becomes a touchstone of engagement for anyone fortunate enough to encounter not only her performances but also the words she offers here: “Music is what you feel immediately, outwardly and within yourself. …Music goes beyond words, beyond colors, beyond forms. …When we think about music, we hear it within ourselves, in detail. We don’t need an instrument.” Perhaps not – but it helps to have an instrumentality. And that, as Life and Music makes abundantly clear, is exactly what Idil Biret is.

(++++) FORMS OF FAITH AND GRANDEUR

Mahler: Symphony No. 2. Wiebke Lehmkuhl, contralto; Nikola Hillebrand, soprano; MDR-Rundfunkchor Leipzig and Sinfonieorchester Basel conducted by Markus Poschner. Prospero. $22.99 (2 CDs). 

Bach: Cello Suites (complete). René Schiffer, cellos. AVIE. $26.99 (2 CDs). 

     Meticulous attention to detail, especially of pacing and dynamics, consistently marked Markus Poschner’s approach to his very extended and very in-depth consideration of Bruckner – and is now in evidence as he begins a Mahler cycle with a live recording of the “Resurrection” symphony on the Prospero label. The deep-seated spirituality underlying the symphony leads to an eventual proclamation of faith that is both hard-won and freely given to those who believe – a bit of a contradiction in terms that Mahler reflects throughout a symphony whose segments using large orchestra and chorus are counterbalanced by many others of quietude and delicacy. Poschner gets those quieter elements just right, along with the work’s expansiveness. The music really sounds like a funeral cortège in the first four minutes of the opening movement, the leisurely pacing in slower portions strongly contrasting with quicker ones. Quiet sections are very quiet, with Poschner drawing attention to the notable delicacy of Mahler’s scoring. The complete silence halfway through this movement is genuinely eerie in its stasis, while the overall impression is of a work in which the bucolic contrasts with the dramatic. Lest there be any question about the pacing that Mahler wanted for the second movement, he specified both Sehr gemächlich, “very leisurely,” and Nie eilen, “never rush.” But the note values themselves require alternating slower and faster sections, an apparent contradiction that is common in Mahler and that Poschner handles with sure understanding of the underlying unity of all the material. Then the third movement starts with a heavy opening timpani stroke that contrasts strongly with the quiet ending of what has gone before. Again Mahler is quite specific in what he wants here, labeling this exceedingly delicate Scherzo (with some contrasting outbursts) both calm and flowing. The music comes from Mahler’s earlier song setting about St.  Anthony of Padua’s sermon to the fish, calling up (for those who know that earlier work) the irony that “the sermon was wonderful but they remain the same,” a touch of irony and ambiguity that fits this part of the “Resurrection” symphony well: real change and full affirmation of faith will come later. The fourth movement, Urlicht, is here blessed (no pun intended) with the exceptional contralto voice of Wiebke Lehmkuhl, who is highly expressive at all volumes and, abetted by Poschner’s sensitive accompaniment, carefully explores the genuine emotion of the words. And then calm and peace are shattered by an exclamation from full orchestra that emerges here like sound sweeping a scene clean. What follows communicates a clear feeling of anticipation and yearning. In Poschner’s pacing, the proclamation of the brass at about eight minutes into the movement seems like an invitation to Heaven – but we are not there yet, given the portentous and conflict-ridden passage that follows. It is at this point that the full massive strength of the orchestra comes through – all the more effectively since Poschner has until now focused so much on quieter and more chamber-music-like passages. Although conflict and difficulty now become musically apparent, there is a sense of the music surging always toward peace. Against this backdrop, the very, very quiet choral entry is highly effective, and the gradual ascent of volume parallels the long-awaited ascent of the soul. Both soloists – Lehmkuhl and soprano Nikola Hillebrand – emote with great feeling; they are at their best when singing together. Poschner reserves another elegantly managed dip into the nearly inaudible right after the word auferstehn just five minutes before the end of this 84-minute performance. The result is that the very loud final chorus is all the more affirmative and effective. The interpretation, orchestral and vocal performances, and very fine sound on this two-CD release bode very well indeed for Poschner’s future plans for Mahler performances and recordings. 

     Huge instrumental vocal and instrumental forces are scarcely necessary for heartfelt expressions of belief and religious fervor: a single instrument can be more than enough. And that is what Bach used in his six Cello Suites, according to some out-of-the-box thinking by René Schiffer, who has been principal cellist of the Apollo’s Fire period-instrument ensemble since the group was founded in 1992. As an instrumental performer, Schiffer is one heck of a writer – and conversely, as a writer, he is one heck of a cellist. He makes all this clear in his essay on the Bach Cello Suites, even as he obscures, mostly deliberately, some of what he is saying. Schiffer clearly has fun with prose, and sometimes with trotting out remarks intended mostly to showcase a mixture of erudition and devil-may-care thinking: “Linda Ronstadt would not have been caught dead singing an American standard the way she learned from Maria Callas’s recordings to sing Puccini.” It is not always easy to know when Schiffer is being serious and when he is kidding his audience, as when, in writing about Suite No. 6, he talks about a third minuet “found in a recently discovered manuscript (unknown because I found it myself and have not told anyone about it yet).” Levity (or potential levity) aside, Schiffer has an intriguing view of the Cello Suites as being an instrumental tracing of the life of Christ, and he points to specific musical examples that, in his view, support that thesis. This makes it crucial to perform the suites exactly as their sequence is numbered, which is not the order in which many recordings present them (although this two-CD set from AVIE, of course, does so, following Schiffer’s determination). Yet if Schiffer is right about the underpinning he suggests – and it is certainly true that religion imbues everything in Bach – he is oddly unwilling to match Bach’s supposed “framing tale” with the trappings of the composer’s own time. Importantly in this regard, he uses the modern pitch standard of 440 Hz as his basis “because my instruments sound better in high pitch,” a somewhat shallow remark (and specious argument) that creates an unresolved conflict between “sounds better” and “sounds right” in terms of Schiffer’s approach. Also – and this is highly unusual – instead of merely opting for a violoncello piccolo with a fifth string for Suite No. 6, as has become customary in historically aware performances (and, by the by, helps support the “life of Christ” thesis musically), Schiffer uses that instrument for Suite No. 5 as well – and in scordatura tuning – simply because he feels like it: “I discovered that on my five-string violoncello piccolo…this suite sounded much more transparent.” Well, that is akin to the old “if Bach had had a Bechstein he would have written for piano” notion, or indeed to any argument for playing Bach on instruments that did not exist in his time – or, in Schiffer’s instrument’s case, on one that did exist but that Bach chose not to use in Suite No. 5. And does Schiffer really think the change of instrument somehow bolsters his theory about the Christ’s-life nature of the Cello Suites? What he writes is a blend of the fanciful with the thoughtfully analytical, so it can be hard to know how seriously to take some of what Schiffer says: does he believe it all himself? In reality, the "truth" of Schiffer’s notion of the undergirding of the Cello Suites is not especially significant – it is a guiding light, and every performer needs one. If it deepens the interpretation and thus the listening experience, then objective “right” or “wrong” scarcely matters. What does matter here, with or without the elaborate religious subtext that Schiffer suggests, is the sheer excellence of the performance of every individual movement of every one of the suites, and the feeling that Schiffer manages to convey that even though each collection of movements stands on its own, everything is intricately interrelated and part of a larger whole. It may be just as well to leave aside possible extramusical meanings, interesting or questionable instrumental choices, and clever if deliberately abstruse commentary, such as Schiffer’s remark that performing Suite No. 6 on a four-stringed cello is “somewhat the equivalent of playing Saint-Saëns’ Rondo capriccioso on the erdu.” What truly matters, what Schiffer offers musically, is sumptuous tone throughout a beautifully played, well-considered, elegantly presented, somewhat quirky presentation of music whose foundational meaning may be a matter of interpretation but whose spectacular beauty and felt-if-not-fully-understood significance emerge with full force from hands and instruments wielded with the tremendous skill and thoughtfulness that Schiffer possesses and that he so generously shares through this always-engaging recording.

(++++) THE AMERICAN WAY(S)

Dvořák: Symphony No. 9, “From the New World”; Carlos Simon: Four Black American Dances. Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra conducted by Manfred Honeck. Reference Recordings. $24.98 (SACD). 

Korngold: Violin Concerto; Samuel Barber: Violin Concerto. Paul Huang, violin; London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jun Märkl. Naïve. $16.99. 

Curtis J. Stewart: 24 American Caprices for Violin. Curtis J. Stewart, Tai Murray, Tobia Im, Deborah Buck, Njioma Grevious, Jory Lane, Lin-Chi Chuang, Bryan Hsu, Ruben Rengel, Melissa White, Max Brown, Ryan Chung and Natalie Oh, violinists. Bright Shiny Things. $19.99 (2 CDs). 

     Dvořák’s last and most popular symphony is from the New World but not of it: the work is Czech at its core despite its significant incorporation of the sound (although not the actual melodies) of what the composer called Negro music (which he conflated with that of Native Americans). There is always something new to be found in this somewhat sprawling symphony, which is not as tightly knit, intense or dramatic as No. 7 or as bright, optimistic and engaging as No. 8, but which is so packed with tunefulness and a slight sense of America as an exotic realm that its popularity is more than understandable. Manfred Honeck, an inveterate tinkerer with composers’ notation who has honed the Pittsburgh Symphony into a world-class ensemble, tackles Dvořák’s Ninth with enthusiasm and delivers a first-class performance whose appeal will depend on whether listeners appreciate the conductor’s fine-tuning of the score or find that it makes this well-known work somewhat quirky rather than freshly envisioned. Honeck’s approach is especially clear in the first movement, which begins very slowly and effectively indeed but is then treated more as a tone poem than a symphony’s opening: the considerable slowdowns around four, seven and 11 minutes into the movement, intended to accentuate specific elements of the musical argument, significantly impede the flow that is a primary characteristic of Dvořák’s style, and then lead to a very fast final minute of the movement. The value of this approach and the adjustments of detail contributing to it – timpani alterations and other elements that Honeck forthrightly advocates in his essay in the Reference Recordings disc’s booklet – are matters of opinion, with individuals’ views going a long way to determining audience response to this release. The best movement here is the second, where the very Bohemian turns of phrase are handled skillfully and the quiet passages are excellent – thanks both to the orchestra and to the exceptional sound quality, whose crystal clarity is notable throughout. This Largo is mostly played straight and is an argument for doing so, doubly so when the ensemble’s brass section is as exceptional as it is here. The third movement proceeds smartly from the start and concludes in the same mode, but its central section is somewhat overly slow and causes the whole thing to drag a bit. This is even more the case in the finale, where the slowdown for the second, very lyrical theme two minutes into the movement bogs the proceedings down unnecessarily, producing a loss of momentum that results in a patchier conclusion to the symphony than is ideal – although the uniformly excellent orchestral playing nevertheless makes this a very fine performance. Also of considerable interest is the pairing of the symphony with Four Black American Dances (2023) by Carlos Simon (born 1986). Dvořák’s symphony celebrates a culture, Simon’s a skin tone, as is more de rigueur in recent times. But Simon’s piece is fascinating in the ways it contrasts with the symphony. Forthright rather than intricate, it explores four very different idioms. Ring Shout has an opening that is raucous, dissonant and emphatic but not especially rhythmic; then it becomes quick, strongly accented, and filled with cross rhythms, brass effects drawn from jazz, and a "fiddling" violin. Waltz is slow, rather characterless and not very danceable. Tap intriguingly imitates the sound of tap shoes through use of the snare drum’s side rim; it is more impressionistic than imitative of the form. And Holy Dance starts with a portentous opening that eventually leads, two minutes later, to hectic, percussion-heavy, brass-inflected material that makes up in ebullience what it lacks in melody – and leads at the end to a rousingly overdone conclusion. There is nothing profound in Simon’s work, but it contains much that is cleverly calculated, and its many rhythmic, harmonic and textural differences from the symphony make this SACD quite interesting to experience as a whole. 

     As different as Dvořák’s and Simon’s ways of handling the American musical experience are, they are distinct as well from the approaches of other composers – American culture is nothing if not multifaceted. The violin concertos of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, a transplant to the United States, and native-born Samuel Barber, include many notable contrasts and distinctive forms of creativity that lead to a genuinely intriguing juxtaposition on a new Naïve CD featuring Paul Huang and the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Jun Märkl. The concerto by Korngold, who is best known for his film music but has recently been receiving something of a revival for his concert-hall works, intriguingly combines both spheres within which the composer operated. It dates to 1945, just after a war in which Korngold stuck to his determination not to compose anything but film music until after Hitler’s defeat – but it is almost entirely built around pieces that Korngold wrote for the movies. Interestingly dedicated to Alma Mahler – Gustav Mahler had been Korngold’s mentor – the concerto starts with a Moderato nobile built on themes from Another Dawn (1937) and Juarez (1939); continues with a Romance whose principal theme is from Anthony Adverse (1936); and concludes with a virtuosic Allegro assai vivace constructed around a theme from The Prince and the Pauper (1937). The harmonic simplicity of the thematic material and its immediate appeal have helped make this one of Korngold’s most frequently performed works, and Huang and Märkl do a fine job of letting its largely surface-level emotionalism flow freely for two movements before the more-virtuosic finale gives Huang plenty of chances to cut loose and demonstrate a delightfully bouncy back-and-forth with the orchestra. Soloist and conductor are also very well paired for the Barber concerto, which was also affected by World War II: only the first two movements were completed before the conflict erupted in late 1939, with the finished work getting its first, private performance in 1940. The comparative technical simplicity of the first two movements contrasts strongly with the difficulty of the concluding perpetuum mobile, but the sweetness of the opening Allegro and following Andante complement Korngold’s concerto very well, being less harmonically trenchant and more consistently lyrical – with the extended oboe solo at the start of the second movement as a highlight. The short and implacable final Presto in modo perpetuo comes as something of a shock after the first two movements, so different in tone and approach is it from them; and it is to Huang’s credit that he does not look for connections between the finale and the earlier movements that are simply not there. In truth, Barber’s concerto seems more disconnected than Korngold’s, with the conclusion having a tacked-on feeling about it. But Huang’s strong and even pacing and Märkl’s apt accompaniment give the last movement, and the concerto as a whole, a sense of tighter organization than it sometimes seems to possess – making this work a fitting foil for Korngold’s. 

     The violin playing is every bit as impressive – in a different way and different milieu – on a two-CD Bright Shiny Things release featuring composer/performer Curtis Stewart (born 1986) and a dozen compatriots. The music here is part Paganini Caprices, part Beethoven-and-others Diabelli Variations, and all tuned to modern sensibilities. The Paganini element is the overall structure: 24 short individual works for violin solo, although nothing by Stewart will likely have the staying power and cross-pollination potential of the 24^th of Paganini’s works. The Diabelli Variations element is not so much the famous set by Beethoven as the 50 variations by 50 other composers, for all of which it helps to know the underlying tune by Diabelli – because in all 24 of Stewart’s pieces, knowing the foundational work is a near-necessity for full enjoyment of what Stewart has created. This does limit the effectiveness of Stewart’s piece: if you are not familiar with Earth Wind and Fire’s September, Oscar Peterson’s Hymn to Freedom, Donny Hathaway’s This Christmas, Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s This Train, and the other originals upon which Stewart built his caprices, you will still hear some very fine violin playing (by Stewart himself for 12 of the items, by professionals and students for the rest) but will not really get the point of the music. Some of the baseline pieces here are on the surprising side (Taps by Daniel Butterfield, 9 to 5 by Dolly Parton), while others seem inevitable (Blowing in the Wind by Bob Dylan, Hymn to Freedom by Oscar Peterson), and still others seem to be matters of personal taste (U.N.I.T.Y. by Queen Latifah, Celia Cruz, Oye Cómo Va by Tito Puente). The point, though, is that unlike Paganini’s explorations of themes he himself created, unlike the ventures by Beethoven and 50 others into variations on a clearly stated musical basis, Stewart has rung changes on 24 works in ways that obscure the originals as often as they explore them. Anyone who does not know where each of Stewart’s pieces originates will miss most of the point of his 24 American Caprices. Even then, there will be plenty to enjoy here simply in terms of the violin performances and in the far-ranging and sometimes far-fetched handling of the musical sculptural material. Nevertheless, what would have worked better for this production would have been a forthright presentation by Stewart of each “basis” work, followed by the caprice created from it. True, that would have lengthened the release onto a third disc, but just as the music here has American roots, so the notion of a touch of wretched excess in its presentation would somehow have seemed suitably American. In the form in which listeners actually get 24 American Caprices, the work will be more or less enjoyable and intelligible depending on the extent to which each individual person hearing it is able to ferret out Stewart’s starting point. Come to think of it, figuring out flights of fancy without, perhaps, knowing where they come from also seems like a particularly American characteristic.

(++++) EXCELLENCE, COMPROMISED

Nielsen: Complete Solo Piano Music. Rikke Sandberg, piano. OUR Recordings. $34.99 (3 CDs). 

Bach: French Suites Nos. 1-6, BWV 812-817. Francesco Tristano, piano. Naïve. $16.99. 

     A release of genuine importance marred by significant, pervasive missteps in packaging and presentation, Rikke Sandberg’s recording of Carl Nielsen’s complete solo-piano music ought to be an occasion for three cheers, or even four. Those cheers are fully merited by Sandberg’s playing: the uniform excellence of the performances almost makes up for the slapdash and inconsiderate-to-listeners sequencing and presentation of the ancillary material. But not quite. Because Nielsen’s piano music is not well-known or frequently performed – perhaps because he was a mediocre pianist himself and very rarely played his own keyboard works – it is more than usually important for a comprehensive release like this one to present the works in a logical sequence and provide some written connective tissue to allow listeners to hear them in context. A booklet essay by Niels Bo Foltmann attempts to do just that, discussing the pieces chronologically and using their CNW numbering from the catalogue of Nielsen’s works to provide continuity. But the CD track listings themselves never give CNW numbering – not once – and the arrangement of pieces on the discs is thoroughly incoherent. For example, the essay makes much of the fact that Nielsen’s 1917 Theme and Variations was composed immediately after his Chaconne, an important fact since these are two of his three most significant piano works. But the two pieces are not placed one after the other on the discs – in fact, they are on separate CDs. The overall arrangement of the tracks is neither chronological nor set up systematically in other ways. For example, after 1897, Nielsen went through a near-20-year period in which he composed no piano music at all, and that could certainly be an organizing principle for the discs; but here, works from before and after the hiatus are tossed helter-skelter together. Elements explained in the essay sometimes do not dovetail with the actual recording: the written material notes that in 1908, Nielsen “composed several short piano pieces for Otto Benzon’s play Parents,” but the recording includes only a single 90-second item labeled as relating to that stage work – so are the other pieces lost, is this not really a complete-works release, or what? And there are plenty of other discrepancies between what is written and what is heard, often in the form of small but irritating wording differences, such as the essay mentioning a piece called The Music Box that appears nowhere, although there is one called The Musical Clock. And then there is the strange instance of “a small piano piece (CNW 95)” that turned up after Nielsen’s death – but there is absolutely no identification of where it might be on the recording, although by process of elimination, listeners may be able to figure out that an undated 41-second entry simply labeled Piano Piece is it. But it is important, despite all this, to point out that the frustrations associated with these inconsistencies and many others have nothing to do with Sandberg’s actual performances or with the worthiness of Nielsen’s piano music. There is nothing of meaningless display in these works or Sandberg’s handling of them: a sense of seriousness of purpose pervades her playing throughout, even when the pieces themselves are quite light. Indeed, many of these works are trifles, micro-miniatures lasting a minute or less. The brief items show Nielsen in a jovial mood that contrasts strongly with the complexity and high seriousness of the Chaconne, Theme and Variations, and his third major piano work, Suite “The Luciferian” (the title meaning “light bringer” and having nothing satanic about it). This last work veers effectively from complex and gnarly movements to a sweet and simple Allegretto innocente that shows Nielsen at his most charming. Theme and Variations features some fascinating up-and-down-the-keyboard pianistic acrobatics, and the Chaconne, which itself is actually a theme and variations, starts in traditionalist mode but becomes increasingly modern in sound and approach as it progresses. There is plenty of interest in some other pieces here as well, with one simply labeled Three Piano Pieces being especially involving in its very modern-sounding sonic palette. Scattered around the more-important and more-significant material are some very tiny pieces that in some cases sound like throwaways while in others – notably the 25 of them collectively called Piano Music for Young and Old – are well-conceived and gathered meaningfully into groups. This OUR Recordings release is not the first collection of Nielsen’s solo-piano music, although Christina Bjørkøe’s 2007 readings for CPO, on which the pieces are intelligently arranged chronologically and generally played at brisker tempos, omits the arrangements and incidental music included on Sandberg’s third disc. Sandberg’s offering is significant by any pianistic and musical measure, and her remarkable devotion to the material keeps the recording engaging throughout. It is a real shame that there are so many small but irritating elements in the way the three-CD assemblage is put together: the sloppiness of presentation stands in stark contrast to the care and elegance of the musicianship that is so much in evidence throughout the release. 

     There is nothing sloppy in Francesco Tristano’s fourth entry in what he intends as, eventually, a complete Bach keyboard cycle: the six French Suites. The CD’s many strengths and few weaknesses parallel those of Tristano’s earlier forays into the Six Partitas, English Suites and Seven Toccatas. Among performances on the piano – historically an incorrect instrument, a fact that will trouble many listeners and bother others not at all – Tristano’s show unusual awareness of the way in which the piano’s gradations of touch and dynamics, and the significantly longer decay between notes compared with that of the harpsichord, affect the music. Tristano employs considerably less pedal in this repertoire than do many other Bach piano performers, using the inherent qualities of strings played through striking rather than plucking as an interpretative element. The clarity of his Yamaha instrument is a big plus for this music, although there is a dryness to the sound – from piano, recording or both – that is a touch off-putting in movements intended to convey greater warmth. Tristano nevertheless strives for precisely that: a less-brittle sound than he achieved in the English Suites, befitting music that, written slightly later, is more inward-looking and offers more opportunities for lyricism. Interestingly, while the brighter and quicker movements were the most successful in Tristano’s interpretation of the English Suites, in the French Suites he seems particularly devoted to and focused on the warmer and more expressive elements, such as the Allemande in Suite No. 3 and the Allemande and Sarabande in Suite No. 4, where the welcome lack of overt flair showcases an impressive level of sensitivity. Subtlety is more apparent in Tristano’s French Suites than in some of his prior Bach recordings for Naïve, with Suite No. 6 being especially notable for the careful balance among its movements and the poise with which Tristano explores each individual one while still treating it as an element of a larger whole. Tristano’s ongoing exploration of Bach’s keyboard works is already an impressive achievement that listeners who favor the piano for Bach interpretation will certainly consider a (++++) offering. As for those who prefer the suites on harpsichord and in more historically accurate readings – well, they will be right to deem this version of the French Suites a (+++) release simply because of the use of a piano and Tristano’s way of employing piano-specific techniques and sounds to highlight elements of the music. The good news is that Tristano shines enough meaningful interpretative light on the French Suites so that his recording is worthwhile even for harpsichord-preferring listeners to possess: it proffers a genuinely thoughtful and deeply engaged view that sees the music through a modern lens, but with deep-seated sensitivity and understanding.