I am quite sure that when, in his booklet-note, Jeremy Siepmann calls Bach’s keyboard suites “essentially players’ music”, what he meant was that they were intended for players’ own delectation rather than for performance before an audience. What he did not mean, I am equally sure, was they they were happy hunting-grounds for players to do what they liked with. On the present disc, only in the French Suite does Pires put Bach’s spirit before her own unauthentic pianistic whims. (I observe that it was recorded a whole year after the other two works, in which time she seems, fortunately, to have had a change of heart.) Her Partita nearly had me reaching for the brandy bottle. Its Prelude is subjected to ceaseless surges and falls of dynamics at every moment, as if one were uneasily standing on the swaying deck of a ship: not a single phrase is allowed tonal steadiness. The Allemande is taken absurdly fast, quite out of character, and the Gigue is a race against the clock; romantic rubato perfumes the Sarabande.
There are more eccentricities in the English Suite (though at least the Allemande here is played at the right speed). But the ritornellos of the Prelude are heavily hammered out, the Courante is begun brutally, then repeated in a coy hush, the Musette of the Gavotte is for some reason played sotto voce, and the Sarabande is so swooningly ultra-sentimentalized that I felt like rushing up with the smelling-salts. No, viewed purely as pianism, this is impressive playing – crystal-clear fingerwork, total control of tonal nuance, firm rhythmic pulse (when she is not surrendering to mannerisms); but as interpretations of Bach they could scarcely be more anachronistic.'