Bach Invention and Sinfonies

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Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Johann Sebastian Bach

Label: Astrée

Magazine Review Date: 6/1997

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 68

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: E8603

Tracks:

Composition	Artist Credit
(15) 2-Part Inventions	Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Blandine Verlet, Harpsichord Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
(15) 3-Part Inventions ,'Sinfonias'	Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Blandine Verlet, Harpsichord Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
(15) 2-Part Inventions, Movement: C	Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Blandine Verlet, Harpsichord Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
(15) 3-Part Inventions ,'Sinfonias', Movement: D minor	Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Blandine Verlet, Harpsichord Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
(15) 3-Part Inventions ,'Sinfonias', Movement: E flat	Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Blandine Verlet, Harpsichord Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
(15) 3-Part Inventions ,'Sinfonias', Movement: E minor	Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Blandine Verlet, Harpsichord Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
(15) 3-Part Inventions ,'Sinfonias', Movement: F minor	Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Blandine Verlet, Harpsichord Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
(15) 3-Part Inventions ,'Sinfonias', Movement: G minor	Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Blandine Verlet, Harpsichord Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
(15) 3-Part Inventions ,'Sinfonias', Movement: A minor	Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Blandine Verlet, Harpsichord Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer

Author: Lionel Salter

Reference to the Gramophone

Database reveals that there are more recordings of the two- and three-part Inventions on the piano than on the harpsichord; and as, with the exception of the admirable version by Angela Hewitt, these are treated either as if they were by Schumann or as vehicles for personal eccentricities, another version on the instrument for which they were intended, to put beside Kenneth Gilbert’s magisterial 1985 recording, would on the face of it be very welcome.
In the Inventions, Blandine Verlet’s mainly no-nonsense approach is refreshing after the pointless attempt to inject these valuable miniatures with superfluous anachronisms. Not that she is deaf to their individual characters (though the robust-toned Ruckers harpsichord in the Colmar Museum that she employs makes for some heaviness) or blind to Bach’s contrapuntal ingenuities (inversions, canons, fugatos and so on). She renders her part-playing the more lucid by subtleties of internal phrasing, only occasionally overstepping the mark (as in the E minor) by excessively affettuoso treatment; but her fluency in the D minor, the merriment of the F major and the driving urgency of the A major are very appealing.
When it comes to the three-part Inventions, however, her playing becomes more mannered. The E major trips along engagingly, but in several of the minor-key pieces, apart from a persistent left-hand-before-right which becomes distracting, she indulges in unconvincing rubatos. The F minor is taken so slowly, without a sufficiently firm basic pulse, that it all but falls apart; and in others the shape is distorted. This is particularly so in the G minor, even more in the ornamented version taken from a copy by Bach’s pupil Gerber.'