Following up his 2013 release of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier Book II, Christophe Rousset returns to Le Chateau de Versailles and a 1628 Ruckers model harpsichord for Book I. Rousset’s well-digested sense of style and finished technique permeate every selection. The F major Prelude’s impeccably matched trills, the D major Fugue’s ever-so-subtle accelerations and uplifting dotted rhythms, and the A-flat major Prelude’s bouncing élan readily demonstrate this.
Although Rousset uses agogic phrasing and accentuation as much as other HIP-conscious keyboard practitioners, it never sounds rhythmically jerky, discontinuous, or eccentric. If anything, the D minor Prelude’s tiny pushings and shovings enhance the music’s galloping momentum, but similar gestures in the E minor Fugue and B-flat major Prelude weigh a bit heavily on the toccata-like patterns. The specificity with which Rousset desynchronizes his hands helps clarify long sustained lines in the dense C-sharp minor and B-flat minor five-voice fugues.
The pinpointed control of his legato fingering imparts more variety to the F minor and A minor Fugues than is apparent on first hearing, although the tempos still seem too slow for my taste. On the other hand, I applaud Rousset’s uncommonly brisk alla breve treatment of the B minor Prelude; way too many musicians take it at a reverential crawl.
While the engineering is close-up and clear, I find it relatively compressed compared to the richer bottom end and more spacious room tone of Kenneth Gilbert’s classic DG/Archiv traversal, or to the more transparently engineered Christine Schornsheim (Capriccio) and Masaaki Suzuki (BIS) cycles. While Gilbert, Suzuki, and Blandine Verlet (her version is available to download; the physical CDs are hard to source) still stand as first choices, Rousset’s “48” offers much to savor.
