Johann Sebastian Bach
      French Suites BWV 812-817

* David Cates, harpsichord.
Music & Arts CD-1124 (F) (DDD) TT: 95:00 (2 CDs)

Summary for the Busy Executive: For some, probably over the top.

Of the sets of keyboard music Bach composed - the Goldberg Variations,
the Well-tempered Clavier, the partitas, and the English Suites - the
French Suites are probably his least complicated.  They lack the dramatic
contrasts of the English Suites, the keyboard brilliance of the partitas,
and the architectural mastery of the Goldbergs.  "Complication" is, of
course, a relative term (it's, after all, Bach), and these suites still
function at a higher level than something like Handel's otherwise
delightful keyboard pieces.

I suppose the performer must face the question of what to do with these
works, since they really are, for Bach, rather low-key, and, of course,
the composer provides very little interpretive help.  Bach has further
obscured things by failing to provide, as in the English Suites, a
first-movement prelude for all but the fourth suite, and yet one finds
documentary evidence for the sixth that links a fugitive piece to the
suite as a prelude.  For a music historian, this counts as a strong
precedent: one can reasonably tack on a prelude (in the same key) to
each of the suites.  This points, I think, to their relative structural
laxity as complete works.  You wouldn't dream of interpolating something
into, say, the Goldbergs.  So Cates has taken this path by beginning
suites with preludes from Book I of the Well-tempered Clavier (from
around the same period as the French Suites), one from Book II, and
with two fugitive pieces, one for keyboard and one for lute.

That said, Cates's performance drove me crazy, as schmaltzy a Bach as
I've heard in a while - Phil Spitalny rubatos, exaggerated tempo shifts,
and an aversion to hitting two simultaneous notes cleanly, without a
slight roll (left-hand finger first, right-hand finger a split second
later).  It's as if Cates really wants to do them on the piano - with
its gradation of dynamic and touch and its longer decay, far more
forgiving of this approach - or doesn't trust the music to "speak" without
extraordinary help.  On the other hand, particularly in the fast pieces
(played far more cleanly, by the way), I can't deny that he generates a
real excitement, all too often missing from recordings of these pieces.
Also, the sound of the particular harpsichord he plays is gorgeous, an
Owen Daly copy of 1681 Vaudry in the Victoria and Albert museum.  As
much as some of this turns me off, I can't dismiss Cates.  He's a player
who knows how to get music out of notes.  I simply don't care for some
of what he does, although others might.

Who knows? Cates, like Virgil Fox, may grow on me.

Steve Schwartz