The back-cover notes and booklet annotations for the Steinway & Sons label’s first CD release make a selling point of pianist Jeffrey Biegel’s stylistically informed improvising while playing Bach on a modern concert grand. This is nothing new, as anyone familiar with Bach recordings by Murray Perahia, András Schiff, and Sergei Schepkin will tell you. What’s important is that Biegel is a sensitive and imaginative interpreter, who brings this music to life.
Notice his natural ebb and flow and intelligent coloristic choices in the introductions to both Toccatas, the D major Fugue’s vividly sprung and subtly varied dotted rhythms, the F-sharp Fugue’s gorgeous dry-point trills, and the incisive yet lilting élan Biegel brings to the Fifth French Suite’s Gavotte and the Second Partita’s Courante. And in contrast to Schepkin’s over-elaborate embellishments, Biegel’s emendations (mostly during repeats) draw attention to the music rather than to the pianist. My only cricism concerns the D minor Toccata’s first fugue and the Partita’s Rondeau, where Biegel’s articulation gets heavier and his basic tempos slow down ever so slightly as each movement progresses. In all, this auspicious and superbly engineered debut bodes well for the success of this new label. [9/20/2010]
