Overtly sober, dutiful, and joyless Bach playing seems to be on the upswing, judging from recent harpsichord Well-Tempered Claviers by Gary Cooper (ASV), Ottavio Dantone (Arts Music), and now clavichordist Jaroslav Tuma in his rendition of Book 1. Tuma generally favors slow tempos that all too often obscure the music’s linear flow, as in his frozen, static Fourth Prelude, soggy Ninth, Teutonic, heavily-accented Sixteenth, and choppy, discontinuous Eighth and Twenty-second Preludes. Ditto his clunky, lifeless C-sharp major and E-flat major Fugues, which are totally devoid of humor and swing. At measure 10 in the E-flat Prelude Tuma takes the tempo twice as fast, which completely screws up Bach’s rhythmic proportions. Trills and mordents usually sound effortful and inelegant next to Ralph Kirkpatrick’s fluency and grace.
At least Tuma takes some advantage of the clavichord’s limited dynamic range through excellent voice leading to clarify the difficult C major, F-sharp major, and E major Fugues. It’s also interesting how Tuma plays the final B minor prelude alla breve (feeling two rather than four beats to the measure), very much in the manner of a Handel finale, and with a semblance of vitality and life absent from most of the other performances in this set. Vivid and close-up sonics, good annotations.
