Like my colleague SP, I find Andras Schiff's Partitas a blend of extremely fine pianism and extremely dubious Bach. Stylistically his highly Romantic and 'poetic' nuances of tone and rhythm, with very free rubatos and endless lingerings and languishings, are about a century adrift; his added ornamentation is often inappropriate and oppressive—though, even so, less obtrusive than in his recording of the Inventions (to be reviewed later); his occasional applications of inegalite are not convincing; and Bach's part-writing really does not need tricksy modification. But a pointer to what might have been is provided by such excellent movements as his B flat Gigue, the Allegro of the D major Ouverture, and the Preambulum, Courante and Passepied of the Fourth Partita. The recording of the piano is one of the best I've ever heard.
It has taken a dozen years since winning Second prize in the Leipzig Bach competition, shortly after coming to Europe from his native Brazil, for Jean-Louis Steuerman to enter the record catalogues; but his debut, neatly coinciding with appearances at a Prom and in the Leipzig Musiktage, is quite impressive. He adopts a rhythmically far more direct and straightforward style than Schiff, is sparing with ornaments, and is more closely recorded. Like Schiff, he leaves the listener in no doubt of his pianistic view of the music or his complete tonal command; he has a splendid fluency, both calm (as in the C minor Courante) and fast (as in his furious G major Preambulum or A minor Scherzo), and in only two places—a too dreamy D major Sarabande and a dogged E minor fugue—do his tempos fail to convince; his energetic drive in movements like the Gigues in Partitas Nos. 1, 4 and 5 and his crisp C minor Rondeau and Capriccio is invigorating; and he employs a wide dynamic range—which, indeed, in places (as in the D major Partita, the E minor Aria and the G major Passepied) becomes almost aggressive. He tends to interpret the text very literally: for example, he does not assimilate slightly unsynchronized rhythmic values or apply the expected rhythmic conventions in the A minor Allemande, and he adheres to the controversial square-wheeled form of the E minor Gigue. Whereas Schiff plays every repeat throughout the partitas, Steuerman picks and chooses, sometimes playing none, sometimes just the first (in which case he usually makes some variation in the articulation rather than adding any embellishments); and he tends to end movements with disconcerting abruptness. To sum up: if this is not the ideal performance of the partitas—something which has never yet been achieved—it is a decidedly good one; and if you want these works on the piano, these two records are the best alternative to Glenn Gould's CBS two-LP set (77289, 2/73). '