Rafał Blechacz, piano. Image via Deutsche Grammophon.
It is interesting that several pianists recording for the famous ‘yellow label’ of late are playing Bach, music of course intended for performance on instrument other than the Steinway Concert D. This fine concert pianist would no doubt argue that such music is the very pinnacle of the keyboard repertory and he has made a study of it since childhood. The interesting experience is to hear how imaginative each artist is in compensating for the significant technical and aesthetic challenges. Perhaps the late-Baroque German sound world provides greater artistic freedom for particularly younger musicians in search of expressive freedom than the more constrained and closely observed performance practice of 19th-century music.
Rafał Blechacz, a Polish pianist who won the International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 2005, gives highly convincing interpretations of the repertoire. Born in Nakło nad Notecią this 31-year-old here presents vibrant and muscular playing of Bach, sometimes verging on percussive though never insensitive. Blechacz makes an excellent case for the adaptation to performance on a modern instrument, though a youthful impatience for showy dexterity and an urge to expand the perceived emotional parameters of the music into something from another century may sometimes be at the cost of each composition’s more subtle narrative. Some of the playing in the slow movements, however, is very fine.
In sum, I cannot say that there is much to write home about from this CD comprising music drawn from the sets of Clavier-Übungen, largely the Italian Concerto (BWV 971) the Partitas No 1 (BWV 825) and No 3 (BWV827) with a Chorale ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’ transcribed by Myra Hess and recorded in Hamburg and Berlin between 2012 and 2015. Here is neat, sensitive and thoughtful playing, but with the wealth of recordings available of Bach performed on piano, I do not find it outstanding.
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
Rafał Blechacz, piano
Deutsche Grammophon
Italian Concerto
Partita Nos. 1 & 3
4 Duets BWV 802-805
Fantasia & Fugue In A Minor BWV 944
Jesus, Joy Of Man’s Desiring
Rafal Blechacz
Int. Release 10 Feb. 2017
0289 479 5534 4
