Ever since Glenn Gould’s brilliant 1955 recording of J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations, the dispute over whether the Baroque master’s keyboard works are best performed on the modern piano, as Gould did, or on the harpsichord, has continued. All else being equal, the contrasting techniques required, the sonic and mechanical differences of the instruments, and the size of the performance venue — these are just a few of the variables that muddy these arguments. To my mind, a Goldberg performed at home on a two-manual harpsichord, as Bach specified, and one performed in the concert hall on a modern piano are so radically divergent as to render such partisan questions moot.
At any rate, concert pianists by far outnumber concert harpsichordists, so for this reason alone Bach comes to us nowadays mostly by way of Steinway & Sons. The pianist Jeremy Denk returned to Meany Theater last Tuesday to make a case for Bach on a modern instrument in a rare performance of all six Partitas.
These suites, each a set of six or seven character pieces, interrelate only by dint of a common key. “They’re like a themed playlist,” Denk slyly remarked in an informal introduction. He went on to note that while Baroque dance conventions like Minuet, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, and Gigue recur in each Partita, it was Bach’s genius to reexamine each within the context of a new key.
From the opening of the B-flat Partita, Denk used an understated technique to highlight the intricacies of Bach’s music. He took full advantage of the piano’s tonal clarity and ease of articulation to shape phrases, using the sustain pedal sparingly. Denk’s use of ornament functioned to point up rhythms, particularly in the stately Sarabande. His obvious affection for this music was apparent as he reveled in its endless invention.
This is linear music. The compositions, which date from the mid-1720s, are highly rhetorical, frequently featuring two or three voices in conversation and mostly devoid of the built-in episodes that came to define music of the later period. Concentration is required of the listener, and I’m afraid mine was broken throughout most of the c minor Partita because of a malfunctioning hearing aid a few seats away from me.
The ear-splitting feedback of the device, the simmering distress of those in its vicinity, and the mortified soul vainly attempting to silence it kept my attention off the stage. The poor man was clearly relieved to surrender the still-whistling appliance to a selfless concertgoer who quick-marched it out of the auditorium.
Seemingly unaffected by the great hearing-aid drama that had consumed so many of us, Denk launched into an ebullient reading of the D major Partita. He kept tempos brisk, underlining passing harmonic felicities with unmarked accents and carefully calibrated dynamics. Denk’s playing was not flawless, thank goodness. If an occasional note was dropped or omitted, it was invariably in the service of a greater musical point.
Denk’s overarching intent seemed to be uncovering something ineffable: the character Bach baked into each Partita based on its tonality. I think I sense something heroic in the key of E flat major, and something serious in the key of c minor, but probably only because Beethoven could too. Outside of “major-happy, minor-sad,” the musical tradition associated with any given key seems pretty subjective to me.
Was there something about the character of g minor that caused Mozart and Brahms to surpass themselves? Absolutely. But is the quality that inspired them inherent in g minor or just the received wisdom about g minor? As Kant might have asked, is it the thing-in-itself or its manifestation? D major was definitely a celebratory key for Handel and Bach, and Denk highlighted that sense of elation in this partita.
He commenced the second half with the a minor Partita. Here the singing tone Denk drew from the piano showed off the hidden-in-plain-sight lyricism of the Sarabande, and the final Gigue, a fugue in 12/8 time, dazzled with all kinds of inversions and modulations. Denk managed to convey the Swiss-watch precision of the counterpoint while keeping it light on its feet.
Although the final two Partitas are of the same length as the preceding four, their range seems greater. The G major Partita is probably my favorite, its Praeambulum a majestic introduction to an epic poem. In the Tempo di Minuetto, Bach spikes the first and fourth notes of most measures to create the strange illusion of a dance in two rather than three. The long phrases in 6/8 resolve into the expected three every time, but the disorienting accents put everyone around me on the wrong foot and raised an audible collective chuckle.
Like most of its predecessors, the final Gigue also happens to be a grand fugue, “because Bach couldn’t help himself,” according to Denk. It was at this point that it occurred to me what a feat of memorization and endurance I was witnessing. In just over two hours, Denk presented 41 complicated little whirligigs, each movement a world unto itself. If Denk was fatigued, he didn’t show it.
The final Partita, in e minor, is the most ambitious of the set. The Toccata opens with a tragic flourish, gives way to an involved fugue, and finally returns to the opening sequence, a creation the equal of Bach’s greatest compositions for the organ.
Denk made the strongest case for using a modern instrument in the Corrente: this relentlessly syncopated music simply leapt off the keyboard. Denk leaned into the drama of the Sarabande, with its great suspended chords and pointed up the rustic aspects of the Tempo di Gavotta. The superhuman closing fugue capped the evening’s performance fittingly.
