If one were to take this well-engineered release of Bach transcriptions and put it through a filter that replicates the best sounding piano 78s stemming from Abbey Road’s studio in the 1930s and 1940s, complete with shellac surface noise, one could mistake Alexandre Tharaud for Edwin Fischer. This is old school Bach pianism of the type that my late friend and colleague Harris Goldsmith used to call “Bach-maninov.” Tharaud retools the St. John Passion’s opening chorus in grand gothic Busoni-esque style, with liberal dollops of pedal and inner voices slowly soaring to the fore. Also sample Tharaud’s curvy and sexy Sicilliene from the Flute and Harpsichord Suite BWV 2031 that contrasts to the inherent classicism of the transcriber Wilhelm Kempff’s own interpretation, not to mention Dinu Lipatti’s.
A thousand points of ravishing articulations characterize the A Minor Suite BWV 818a, The famous Air on the G String from the Third Orchestral Suite (here reproduced in C Major instead of the usual D Major) takes a little time to settle into a more-or-less basic pulse; the fanciful ornaments and dynamic dips are at far remove from the steady gravitas we normally anticipate from the original string scoring. Tharaud similarly toys with the BWV 906 C Minor Fantasia’s rhythm, yet his titillating lightness of touch proves how inauthenticity can be fun. Why Tharaud’s transcription of the E Minor Lute Suite BWV 996 omits two movements from the original is anyone’s guess. And his Bach/Gounod Ave Maria emendations are in the best of bad taste. Interestingly, Tharaud plays his transcription of the Sicilliene from the D Minor Organ Concerto BWV 596 at a heavier, more insistent tread compared to the fluid calm of his earlier Harmonia Mundi recording, which is the one I prefer.
The booklet notes are nothing but a puff piece that says next to nothing about Tharaud’s methodology and aesthetic vis-à-vis “hyphenated Bach.
