Comparison Recordings of the Partitas:
Paul Badura-Skoda, [ADD] MCA Westminster
MCAD2-9840.
András Schiff, Decca 411 732-2
Helmut Walcha, Ammer harpsichord. [ADD]
EMI Toshiba CD special import
At the time of the
publication of Bach’s "Op. 1," his six
Partitas, Bach probably still
intended them for harpsichord or clavichord
performance; yet the very musicians
who played clavichord and harpsichord
at that time were the ones creating
the demand for the new pianoforte and
establishing the specifications for
it. As a result, Bach’s Partitas
have had a continuous pianoforte performance
tradition beginning very soon after
their publication.
Freddy Kempf is a singularly
expressive and emotional pianist, almost
a fossil from the nineteenth century,
or at least the early twentieth. He
plays these works as Chopin probably
played them, perhaps as the early Liszt
played them. There is not the merest
nodding acknowledgment of "original
performance practice"; these are romantic
performances full of deep sentiment,
but I do not mean sentimentality. This
is particularly effective in the astonishing
movement No. 2, allemande, of
Partita No. 4, one of Bach’s most eloquent
and most personal statements. Yet during
the rapid, more formally structured
passages, such as the Toccata
to No. 6, or the final Gigues
in both, Kempf plays with complete transparency
and rich drama. Rather than play the
ornaments before the beat, as the Romantics
did, or on the beat as the reconstructions
do, he manages somehow to do both as
once and it is particularly effective.
It must be remarked that Kempf’s piano
is the sweetest sounding Steinway D
piano I’ve ever heard, and you will
never hear one more perfectly in regulation
or tune, which is why I always give
credit in my reviews to Kempf’s technician.
This is not an SACD but I can’t imagine
the piano sounding any better than this,
a tribute to BIS’s technical standards
which are among the very highest in
the industry.
The other performances
on my list of comparison recordings
give very different viewpoints. Paul
Badura-Skoda’s performances are very
scholarly in the spirit of their times,
that is the early 1950s, and were at
one time considered the finest available.
He makes use of occasional octave doubling
which was considered the height of authentic
style in that time. His performances
tend to a slight hesitancy as though
he were constantly evaluating the scholarly
import of what he was doing, innocent
of forward momentum, innocent of showmanship.
Yet these are genuinely musical performances,
highly individual. The piano is probably
his own, in his home, and the state
of maintenance is not peak of the art,
not even for his time. He has an unfortunate
reputation, at least with me, for not
seeming to notice the state of the instrument.
His otherwise excellent recordings of
Beethoven piano sonatas on a piano identical
to the one Beethoven played at the time
of their composition are marred by strings
drifting out of tune and stuck dampers.
András Schiff
has consistently dogged the trail of
Glenn Gould, asking for comparison and
coming up very strong in those comparisons.
Perhaps Schiff is actually better than
Glenn Gould; at least he is exciting,
compelling, consistently musical, never
cranky or eccentric, never annoying,
and he doesn’t sing along with himself.
Yet this music, although it flows freely
from his fingers is never facile or
commonplace. He knows exactly what to
do with each note and he achieves exactly
what he wants to. Anyone who wants to
hear Bach on the piano must own his
recordings, as well as those of Murray
Perahia.
Walcha played on a
large harpsichord, probably not unlike
many that Bach himself played. He was
conservative in his use of ornamentation
and color but achieved a stunning sense
of inevitable forward motion; and breathtaking,
spine-tingling, intensity; his performances
are to my mind the best of these works
ever done. He was recently publicly
criticized for not making use of "modern
scholarship," most of which was published
after he died, but even so his instinctive
musicality and sense of tempo make his
recordings essential listening for any
Bach lover.
Walcha’s Bach recordings
are generally available on CD, the organ
works from DG and the harpsichord works
from EMI, but the Partitas are
only currently listed as available from
Toshiba EMI by special import via Amazon.de
priced at €44.00! Hopefully these recordings
will soon be reissued by EMI France
at bargain prices, as they have issued
Walcha’s complete WTK and Goldberg
Variations.
Paul Shoemaker
Freddy Kempf (Steinway D piano) 
