Emanating from much of this disc is the happy impression that Murray Perahia is thoroughly enjoying what he is playing – nowhere more evidently than when, after an A minor Gigue (with its appropriate repeats) given an irresistible forward drive, he romps straight through it again, apparently out of sheer exuberance (oddly enough, Schiff did the same). Elsewhere too, quick movements are immensely engaging – transparent and unaffected courantes, buoyant gigues full of verve, the bourrees delightfully crisp and light, the passepieds utterly enchanting (especially in the major-key one). With strong rhythmicality, varied articulation, the neatest of ornaments and intelligent distribution of interest among inner parts, such performances give great pleasure. And a highly embellished double of the Sarabande in Suite No. 4, on the lines of that in Suite No. 2, is so convincingly stylish that I began to wonder whether some new research had discovered that it had been written by Bach himself.
However, in places Perahia’s purely pianistic instincts lead him astray. Affettuoso treatment of the F major and E minor Allemandes lend an anachronistically romantic gloss to the music, and the expressive A minor and F major Sarabandes find him sounding self-conscious, trying too hard and losing momentum: it is noticeable that there is greater continuity in the E minor Sarabande, which is simpler in texture. And was it necessary in the preludes – vigorously springy as they are, and the fugal one in E minor cleanly handled – to exaggerate the fencing-off of episodes? Some of us are quite capable of appreciating the structure without this.'