JS BACH 6 Partitas
Koopman’s pupil Mustonen with Bach on harpsichord
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Johann Sebastian Bach
Genre:
Instrumental
Label: Polyhymnia
Magazine Review Date: 02/2012
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 75
Mastering:
Stereo
DDD
Catalogue Number: PH0908
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Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
(6) Partitas |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
Elina Mustonen, Harpsichord Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer |
Author: Philip Kennicott
The principal drawback of Mustonen’s set is the harpsichord itself, a 1993 instrument based on a Couchet original. It often sounds overwhelmed, especially during the too-frequent movements in which Mustonen favours heavy registration. It is generally clangorous and aggressive in character, and it emphasises the rather surprising infelicities of tuning between the choirs of strings. And while good instruments can produce a lovely, light, nasal sound – an essential for contrast – Mustonen’s produces something more sour-cherries and cloying.
All of this makes for an in-your-face wall of sound during too many of the movements in these masterful hybrid works that bring together the full range of Bach’s keyboard style, with its French and Italian roots. Mustonen never lacks for surface clarity but one misses Leonhardt’s more analytical, and often leisurely, X-ray of the music (compare his almost casual back-and-forth between answering lines in the Fantasia from the Partita No 3 in A minor). One also craves something quirky and distinctive, those small discoveries within a little inner movement that suddenly make it memorable. Staier, in the Corrente of the A minor Partita, produces an exaggerated bounce that makes the movement seem full of elasticity and vigour. It is the sort of thing one rarely gets from Mustonen, who plays it straight, as she does almost everything in this admirable but not thoroughly engaging collection.
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