Bach: Clavierübung I
No entries show up in the Fanfare Archive for Benjamin Alard, which I suppose shouldn’t be surprising, since counting this new release his discography numbers only two recordings a ccording to ArkivMusic; the other, also on Alpha, is a CD of Bach’s trio sonatas for organ. His official bio, however, cites two other CDs on a label, Editions Hortus, that may have limited distribution outside of France. Born in 1985, the French Alard is both an award-winning harpsichordist and organist who studied at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. At 25, he has already performed with leading period-instrument ensembles, such as La Petite Bande under Sigiswald Kuijken and Capriccio Stravagante under Skip Sempé, and he has established himself as a leading presence as a keyboard artist on the early-music scene, participating in a number of international festivals. Going up against established masters in this repertoire—and for apples-to-apples comparison I cite only harpsichordists—such as Christophe Rousset, Pieter-Jan Belder, Ralph Kirkpatrick, Gustav Leonhardt, Trevor Pinnock, Igor Kipnis, and Blandine Verlet—the young Alard has stones; you’ve got to give him that. The question is does he have the goods to pull it off? And the answer, in a word, is “yes.” The six keyboard partitas that comprise Part I of Bach’s Clavier-Übung (Keyboard Practice) in its totality are arguably the pinnacle of the composer’s works for solo harpsichord. Though they are among Bach’s earliest pieces to be published (they appeared in print between 1726 and 1730), they are actually the last of his three sets of keyboard suites to be written. (They were composed between 1725 and 1730–31.) The English Suites were composed sometime between 1715 and 1720, and the French Suites, between 1722 and 1725. We may therefore assume that the partitas are a summation, up to that time, of Bach’s compositional style and technique as applied to the harpsichord, for which they were written. Speculation has it that Bach intended to write a seventh partita, perhaps as a tribute to his predecessor in Leipzig, Johann Kuhnau, who had published two volumes of his own Neue Clavier-Übung, each containing seven partitas. Bach’s choice of keys for his six partitas does suggest a planned seventh that would have had to be in F Major to complete the scheme; indeed, F Major is the key of the Italian Concerto that opens the Clavier-Übung, part II. Is it possible that the movements of the Italian Concerto would have been incorporated into the seventh, missing, partita? It’s an interesting theory. In three out of the six partitas, Bach pretty much follows standard operating procedure vis-à-vis succession of movements. All six partitas, without exception, begin with an introductory movement, though fancifully, perhaps, Bach calls each by a different name: Praeludium, Sinfonia, Fantasia, Ouverture, Praeambulum, and Toccata. These are followed in Nos. 1, 3, and 5 by the customary stylized dance movements: Allemande, Courante (or Corrente, depending on whether Bach was in French or Italian mood), and Sarabande. Again, in all six partitas, one or more take-your-pick dance movements, such as Menuet, Gavotte, Passepied, etc., are inserted after the Sarabande. And in all but No. 2, the partitas end with the customary concluding Gigue. But No. 2, one of the three “irregulars,” ends with a movement Bach calls Capriccio, which is not in the usual 6/8 or 12/8 gigue meter, but in 2/4, so it’s not just another gigue by a whimsical name. In the two remaining “irregular” partitas, Nos. 4 and 6, Bach gets cutesy with the standard layout of movements, inserting an Aria or Air in between the Courante and Sarabande, so that we end up with insertions both before the Sarabande and after it. To mix it up further, in No. 4, Bach calls his Courante by its French name, but the Aria that follows it by its Italian name; whereas in No. 6, he reverses himself, calling his Corrente by its Italian name and his Air by its French name. Whether this has some special significance or not, I don’t know, but is it too much to imagine that Bach wasn’t the stern wig he’s often portrayed as, and that he was just being mischievous? The aforementioned Capriccio movement offers ample evidence of the composer’s off-the-wall humor; it’s a real ear-tickler. A final footnote to this whole business is that at one point the partitas came close to being called German Suites to complement the already written English and French Suites, which, technically speaking, are no more English or French, respectively, than are the partitas German. And who would know better than Christophe Rousset? Harpsichordist, Baroque music specialist, and Frenchman, he has observed that all of Bach’s keyboard suites follow a largely Italian convention. Now, back in Fanfare 27:4, Patrick Meanor reviewed a recording of the partitas on the Satirino label performed by harpsichordist Kenneth Weiss. That was in 2004. Six years later, as inexplicably but often happens, the same album was sent to the magazine to be reviewed again, and this time, as recently as 33:5, it was assigned to Christopher Brodersen. The American-born Weiss has long been active on the Parisian period-instrument scene, having collaborated with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants for many years. In any case, both Meanor and Brodersen found much to rave about in Weiss’s readings, which the harpsichordist performs on a copy of a Gottfried Silbermann instrument built by Anthony Sidey. I missed Meanor’s earlier review, but based on Brodersen’s glowing account, I decided to acquire the Weiss on my own. Contra my colleagues, I found Sidey’s harpsichord, or Satirino’s recording of it, hard and metallic sounding and fatiguing to listen to. So, only in part for that reason, Weiss’s recording would not have received my recommendation had I reviewed it. That is not the case with the sound of Alard’s harpsichord, which is also modeled after a German instrument by Sidey. It is captured perfectly at an ideal distance in the ambient and ever so slightly reverberant acoustic of the Chapelle Notre-Dame de Bon-Secours in Paris. Balanced throughout its registers, of crystal clarity in its voicing, and so dulcet of tone is this instrument that I found myself listening, enchanted, to all six partitas straight through without tiring of it. If Meanor found Weiss’s performances “passionate,” “poignant,” “terrifying,” and “filled with existential dread,” I found them aggressive, driven, and in-your-face—other reasons, in addition to the aforementioned clangorous and clattering sound of the instrument, that Weiss is not to my liking. In contrast, I find Alard’s readings poetic, lyrical, filled with grace, and ultimately sublime. Perhaps it’s the difference between the American in Paris, Weiss, and the patrician elegance and refinement of the natural-born Frenchman, Alard. In Alard’s playing, I hear a natural and logical connection to, and extension of, François Couperin and the French keyboard tradition, and I find it exquisitely beautiful. The style is manifested in Alard’s exceptionally imaginative, perfectly timed, and delightful agréments that he applies so tastefully in the binary repeats. Even in the fiendishly difficult Capriccio of the C-Minor Partita, which is already wacky enough as is with its oddball dissonances and harmonic excursions, Alard finds the time and space between the notes to add just the right zinger of an embellishment. Just listen to the mordents that trip by at 1:29 and again at 1:33 in the repeat of the A section. But there are other ways to embellish besides adding ornamental notes, and you can hear it in Alard’s playing of the repeated B section. Here the embellishing takes the form of coordinating the right and left hands differently than in the first time through, so that the syncopated and offbeat rhythms in the counterpoint take on a totally different emphasis. The more I listened to these performances, the more I came to believe that there is as much genius in Alard’s conception of this music as there is in Bach’s creation of it. For me, this is now, and will be for the foreseeable future, the be-all and end-all of Bach keyboard partita recordings. The set is beautifully presented in a four-panel cardboard foldout with detailed, informative notes in French and English and enhanced by a wealth of photographs. If Weiss’s partitas show up on Brodersen’s 2010 Want List, Alard’s may well show up on mine. But whether it does or not (there are always hard choices to make), if you care about Bach on the harpsichord, you must not be without this release for another minute. -- Jerry Dubins, FANFARE [9/2010]