As a Bach pianist, Maria Tipo’s tempo fluctuations, tapered phrases, bottomless palette of tone colors, voluminous pedal effects, and restless pursuit of inner voices (real, implied, and imaginary) will send purists begging for mercy. Even in hyphenated Bach (Busoni’s Chaconne and the mighty St. Anne’s Prelude and Fugue, or Myra Hess’ “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”), Tipo makes dyed-in-the-wool Romantic Bach players like Edwin Fischer or Samuel Feinberg sound like Helmut Walcha.
Perhaps its easiest simply to accept Tipo on her own terms. Check your stylistic bias at the door, and let your senses be ravished by Tipo’s amazingly varied articulation in the little Preludes and Fugues, her honeyed legato in the Partitas’ Sarabandes, or the garish gearshifts and amusing bits of left-hand business in the Italian Concerto first movement. To be accurate, Tipo does temper her style by a couple of degrees and plays (relatively) straighter in the Goldberg Variations and the Chromatic Fantasy & Fugue. Scholarship, schmolarship: Tipo’s Bach pianism is the Inauthenticity Movement’s best friend, and it’s nice to have all of her solo EMI Bach output bundled together for cheap. Stash it in a brown paper bag next to Schiff, Hewitt, and Gould, then break it out when no one’s looking!
