João Carlos Martins recorded Bach’s complete keyboard music (at least most of it) during the 1980s and ’90s. Over the years those performances have appeared on at least three labels (Arabesque, Tomato, and Concord), and are being re-released via producer Heiner Stadler’s Labor Records. The pianist’s energetic, somewhat heavy and monochrome touch divests the first three English Suites of the textual variety and airy, dance-like qualities that characterize Murray Perahia’s more colorful and crisp readings. And Sviatoslav Richter’s equally “pianistic” interpretation of the G minor Suite benefits from less emphatic (and predictable) accents and a purer, singing line in the Allemande and Sarabande. I’m drawn to Martins’ “improv” section in the Chromatic Fantasy, where he pulls out the piano’s romantic stops (added bass notes and upholstered octave doublings) to passionate and convincing ends. But I don’t like how he pounds out many of the companion fugue’s downbeats while slowing down to regroup his fingers before climaxes. The results sound pompous and ungainly compared to the fleet calm and polyphonic finesse that distinguish piano versions from Andras Schiff and Evgeny Koroliov. In other words, the best of Martins’ Bach cycle has yet to be reissued.
