In light of pianist Cédric Tiberghien’s finer Bach and Debussy performances on earlier Harmonia Mundi releases, this disc is somewhat of a letdown. Its overly resonant and distant sonic perspective pulverizes much of Bach’s fast-moving polyphony into musical oatmeal, consequently exaggerating the spongier attributes of Tiberghien’s uneven playing. To be specific, the pianist’s distensions and underlinings in the C minor Partita’s opening Sinfonia seem to slow down the music as it proceeds, while the wilting, drooping Sarabande dies of malnourishment. Even the 88-year-old Claudio Arrau on his last legs, in a recording few critics enjoyed, played this movement with infinitely more life, to say nothing of the invigorating Horszowski in his early 90s. Even worse is what must be the most enervated performance ever of the D major Partita’s Allemande, clocking in at 11 and a half interminable minutes (the movement usually takes around eight minutes with double repeats), plus an amorphously shaped Sarabande.
Tiberghien saves his finest work for the A minor Partita, notably in the brisk, sharply-etched Courante and in the Scherzo, where the pianist whimsically varies the voicing of the militant left-hand aprpeggiated chords on the repeats. On the whole, however, Tiberghien’s superficially pretty Bach Partitas, whether fast, slow, or in-between, do not match the contrapuntal acumen and stylistic insights that distinguish versions by Gould, Schiff, Hewitt, Goode, or the overlooked and underrated Zhu Ziao-Mei.
