Pablo Casals reportedly claimed that one should play Bach like Brahms, and Daniel Barenboim certainly takes that advice to heart. As on his 1989 Goldberg Variations recording, Barenboim’s approach to The Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1 puts pianism first and counterpoint last. Listeners familiar with the polyphonic clarity that distinguishes pianists as disparate as Gould, Schiff, Koroliov, Hewitt, and Horszowski may be taken aback at Barenboim’s liberal dollops of sustain pedal (the E-flat Prelude is an extreme example).
Barenboim often resorts to left-hand octave doublings in order to reinforce long pedal points and to achieve textural variety, as in the B minor Prelude’s outer sections. While Barenboim’s wide array of expressive nuances, dynamic extremes, and pedal effects aim to underline the music’s harmonic tension, they frequently obscure the direction of individual lines. As a result, subsidiary voices randomly fall in and out of focus in the Preludes in E minor, E-flat minor, and F minor, as well as the F-sharp minor, G-sharp minor, A minor, and C-sharp minor Fugues. In his booklet remarks, Barenboim describes the latter as “a dance with enormous vitality,” but you’d never know that via his droopy performance.
Yet Barenboim also surprises. The G major and B-flat major Preludes couldn’t be more supple and breezy, while the C major Fugue and B-flat minor Prelude receive heartfelt and intelligently voiced readings that stand with the very best. No doubt a strong personality is at work at the keyboard, yet for less pretentious manifestations of “old fashioned” Bach pianism I prefer Edwin Fischer and Samuel Feinberg.
