J. S. Bach
Partitas, BWV 825-830

Rosalyn Tureck (piano)
Philips 456 876-2 (mono) Total time: 79:31 + 79:48

Summary for the Busy Executive: Tremendous.

The liner notes to this installment of "Great Pianists of the 20th Century"
(vol.  93) spend some time defending the inclusion of Ms.  Tureck in the
series.  She has pioneered a career of a certain type.  After her start in
standard Romantic virtuoso repertoire as well as in contemporary music, she
settled into a dedicated devotion to one composer - Bach - at the time, a
very unusual choice for a pianist.  It takes a virtuoso to play Bach well,
but the composer doesn't provide Lisztian jaw-dropping finger fireworks.
The virtuosity is subtler and at least as much mental as mechanical.
Tureck has not confined herself to the piano.  She has also mastered
harpsichord and clavichord, conducted, and provided scholarly editions of
some of Bach's non-keyboard works.  For my money, she has achieved much in
just about everything she's set her mind to.

We could talk about whether Bach should be done on the piano at all, but to
me that's a non-issue.  Authenticity - and one could debate that issue all
by itself - matters to me less than musical result.  I like HIP performance
because good HIP performers give me new insights into the music.  On the
other hand, Stokowski's and Webern's Bach transcriptions for orchestra do
the same.  At this stage of the game, furthermore, it's not a matter of
either-or.  One can pick from a huge range of performance styles.
Recognizing the value and pleasures of HIP shouldn't blind us to those
of first-rate non-HIP musicians.

My favorite recordings of the Partitas (in no particular order) include
Gould and Hewitt, as well as Tureck.  I became acquainted with the Tureck
last of all, even though she recorded it first.  This partly resulted
from her American label, the small but patrician American Decca, who also
recorded such artists as Szymon Goldberg, Andres Segovia, and the New York
Pro Musica, but who never seemed to have their distribution act together.
Until recently, so much of her early work never made it to CD.  Companies
have begun to make up for this lapse, and I will review some time in the
future at least three more releases - from Philips, DG, and VAI.  Comparing
my three favorite versions, I'd say in general that Hewitt strikes me as
vivacious, Gould as nervous and edgy, and Tureck as elegant.  I won't call
one better than another, because they all play at such a high level and
because Bach's music encourages very different approaches.  I prefer to say
"this shows something about Bach I hadn't thought of" rather than "this is
Bach in essence."

Tureck's playing has changed over the years, and this reflects her search
for a piano style suitable for Bach.  Her harpsichord and clavichord
playing has influenced her piano playing, for example.  I prefer her work
from the Fifties and early Sixties - to me the most sheerly beautiful piano
tone she ever achieved.  It reminds me a bit of cream in a silver pitcher.
She spins out long lines of music and phrases gorgeously besides.  It's
almost like listening to a string quartet.  Yet, she can be rhythmically
sharp when the music calls for it.  She has complete control of the full
dynamic range - at least three gradations of pianissimo, for example.  Most
amazingly, she can emphasize any contrapuntal line at any time and even
several lines simultaneously, all clear and nothing disappearing into a
pianistic "wash." If the musical pleasures of Bach lie for you in his
counterpoint, then give these discs a listen.

Frankly, I have some difficulty keeping the keyboard works of Bach
straight, with the exceptions of the WTC, the Goldbergs, the Italian
Concerto, and the English Suites.  There are indeed a lot of them.  I
think of the English Suites as having more complex opening movements than,
say, the French Suites, but that applies to a bunch of other Bach works
as well, including the partitas.  Tureck's reading brings out the
individuality of each partita unlike almost any other - this despite a
non-theatrical approach.  Tureck achieves poetry of a very high order,
essentially through restraint.

Each movement presents something special, but I'll give just the
highlights.  In the Partita No.  1 "Allemande," Tureck creates three voices
out of mainly two lines through superb dynamic control of each voice and
an impeccable sense of phrase.  The following "Corrente" sings with a quiet
joy, all the while miraculously avoiding the fey.  I should say that I can
play this one - that is, I hit the notes - but not nearly this well.  Of
course, I'm a klutz, but Tureck leaves better keyboard players than me in
the dust as well.

The Partita No. 2 seems one of the more popular of the set among pianists.
Argerich, for example, plays it in her volume (No.  2) of this same "Great
Pianists of the 20th Century" series.  It's a brilliant performance,
emphasizing the drama and color of Bach's music - basically an orchestral
conception, I think.  Compared to Tureck, she flies - roughly six minutes
shorter over all six movements.  On the other hand, Tureck moves with all
deliberate speed - emphasis on "deliberate." She holds your interest
through her control of line, phrase, and general architecture.  By "line,"
I mean the way she connects notes one after the other - the impulse behind
the singing, the feeling that nothing stops, that even at the end of the
piece, the music continues somewhere.  Control of "phrase" demands that the
performer understand the location of the keystone or destination within a
musical sentence.  Think of all the ways a good actor (or even a bad one)
can deliver "To be or not to be:  that is the question." What is the most
important word in the line? You can't hit everything without sounding hokey
and stiff.  Your choice determines how the rest of the line falls into
shape.  The same holds true for a musician.  This simple concept usually
takes a lifetime to learn.  Without getting weird about it, Tureck
continually surprises you.  In the opening "Sinfonia," a three-part
structure (French overture intro, aria, and extended quasi-fugal tag),
Bach offers consecutive quick riffs in which the same high note culminates
each variation on the riff.  Most pianists hit that note more or less the
same.  Tureck never steps on that note the same way twice.  Each time
differs from every other significantly:  you know she has thought about her
interpretation down to that minute level.  You can't do this sort of thing
without stupendous technique; it's highly unlikely the options will even
occur to you.  In the final part of the "Sinfonia," Tureck emphasizes both
the independence and the asymmetry of Bach's lines - about as far from
"sewing-machine Bach" as you can get.  It's like watching the dodge-'em
cars at the amusement park - all these little cars careening and careering,
except in Tureck's case, they never crash.

For the first half, Tureck's account of the Partita No. 3 is a study in
low dynamics and the range of mood possible therein - from the elvish
lightness of the "Corrente" to the lyrical melancholy of the "Sarabande."
The dynamic spectrum opens up in the final three movements, where Tureck
delivers tremendous intensity and shows Bach almost in a country-dance
mode.  It makes for an odd picture - highly sophisticated music, where you
nevertheless hear the occasional stamp of feet on a wooden floor.

The Partita No. 4 counts as one of the two most elaborate (the other:
No. 6) of the set.  In order to fit all the partitas on two CDs, Tureck -
contrary to her custom - consented to removing the repeats from the massive
"Sarabande" movement.  Even then, she clocks in at around four and a half
minutes.  The "Allemande" thus becomes the longest movement of all, at
nine minutes.  Think of the difficulty in sustaining interest over such
a span, without the dramatic juxtapositions and contrasts of Romantic
music.  Tureck responds to the challenge and generates a line that turns
and glides like a great dancer.  She calls upon all her considerable
pianistic resources - varieties of dynamic, touch, "connectedness" between
notes.  The musical argument has more shade than a Caravaggio.  Considering
her triumph here makes me long for those missing "Sarabande" repeats.

The "Praeambulum" that opens the fifth partita always struck me as an
odd little piece - mostly 16th-note runs here and there punctuated by a
three-chord pattern.  Tureck here draws four parts out of Bach's two-line
writing and works wonderful changes on the place of the three-chord pattern
in the line - as a conclusion to a series of runs; as a temporary fulcrum,
tipping the music from one idea to the next; as the fanfare heralding more
to come.  For just flat-out beautiful playing, the "Sarabande" here ranks
for me as the outstanding track of the entire set.  In the minuet, Tureck
plays with rhythmic ambiguities:  the old idea that six beats can be
grouped in two sets of three or in three sets of two.  She essentially
turns the movement into both minuet and gigue and metamorphs one to the
other without any sense of break at all.  She caps off the work with a
hell-for-leather fugal gigue.  However, she also gives you more than animal
spirits.  Tureck's sense of architecture is formidable.  She isolates a
trill in the subject and then lets you hear each line of the fugue tossing
that trill back and forth, almost like jazz players riffing off one
another.  Stupendous.

Tureck normally doesn't strike one as a "psychological" artist.  Yet her
account of the sixth partita takes one to emotionally complex country.  One
might call it dreamlike, if that word hadn't the connotations of "dreamy"
and pink clouds.  Tureck gives us real dreams - surprise, steely inner
logic, and an undercurrent of menace never far away - not only in weighty
sarabande, but also in the so-called "lighter" dances of the allemande,
corrente, and gigue.

The sound, of course, is glorious mono, but it really doesn't matter.  It's
clean and Tureck's pianism gives you all the separation you need.

Steve Schwartz