Jean Rondeau Harpsichord
Erato 0190296508110
2 CDs
Full price
The Review
Rondeau takes quite deliberate tempi but this gives him the chance to explore the glorious melodic lines in the Aria and thirty variations fully.
He does not over decorate or lose patience with the simplicity of Bach’s invention and feel that he has to embellish constantly what is possibly the greatest musical narrative ever composed. He uses the freedom in between the written notes to move the lines along and emphasise harmonic progression with a sense of affectionate economy. He knows that in our time the work is familiar but still has the confidence to find his own way to its heart.
Let’s get out of the way a serious criticism that has nothing to do with Bach, Jean Rondeau’s performance or Jonte Knif and Arno Pelto’s magnificent harpsichord. The liner is a disgrace. Basically, although there is a booklet, there are no notes. Nothing about the music, the composer, the player or the instrument. Cynically the marketing people have put the word ‘silence’ in parentheses on two of four blank pages. This is an insult to consumers and a wholly unnecessary impediment to anyone collecting this astonishing work for the first time. Erato’s staff should be ashamed of themselves.
The Goldberg Variations are heard in all manner of arrangements and versions: nowadays often with a contemporary composer’s work interpolated or juxtaposed. The result is usually that Bach wins hands down and his successors are left looking a little like foundation students. It is refreshing, then, to hear a straightforward reading on an instrument that is neither more nor less than it promises: full toned, well tuned and capable of purveying plenty of mood changes. One loses the dynamic variation of a modern piano or bowed strings but the two manuals and registry shifts of the harpsichord Bach specifies allow the performer to work the magic through other means – fluent fingerwork, imaginative voicing between the manuals and alterations in speed, and the way the movements fit together. In all of these Rondeau excels.
Our veneration for this music probably requires a performer to bring out the grandeur over the virtuosity in a way that might have surprised its first interpreters. Certainly there are harpsichordists now who would want to edge towards a lighter view and would find Rondeau a mite pompous. He is certainly intense but in this, of all Bach’s work, that is surely justified. I just wish Erato would treat its customers with the same respect in the presentation.
SM