Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
French Suite No.5 in G major BWV 816
Bruce Liu (piano)
rec. 2021, Teldex Studio, Berlin
Reviewed as a digital download from a press preview
Digital download release only without booklet
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 4863138 [12]
Deutsche Grammophon are rapidly turning into the pianistic equivalent of Chelsea Football Club – hoovering up all the best young talent but ending up with so many players that talents who would walk into other sides barely make the bench. Bruce Liu is the latest up and coming superstar in the making to join DG’s roster but let’s hope he gets to make more records than have to date emerged from his label mates, Blechacz and Seong Jin Cho. Depending on your point of view, this isn’t even a proper album since it is short, digital only and comes without a booklet.
As someone who mostly listens to music in digital format, I have no problem with digital only releases. They certainly save on shelf space though the carbon footprint of storing so much digital music isn’t to be contemplated. Things have also improved greatly in terms of providing texts and translations with digital releases – at least outside of streaming platforms. The absence of a booklet with this release probably reflects its short duration (it is priced accordingly). It may well be that in time this comes to form part of a full album’s worth of music.
This short format digital album is also a big improvement on the so called ‘singles’ that normally precede the release of a full album in that we get an entire work instead of a single random track which can sometimes be little more than a minute in duration. Likewise, if this format allows these fabulous DG pianists to release more music, I am all in favour. The fear is that it becomes a cover for fewer album length releases.
The classical industry is feeling its way gingerly into the digital future and in terms of the production values of this album, as with other piano records put out by the label, DG could hardly serve their artists better. I would consider the sound of the Teldex Studio in Berlin to be the definitive piano sound of the era.
Climbing down off my soapbox, what of the playing? It is terrific. Much more traditional than say Vikingur Olafsson, not quite as gleefully capricious as Blechacz, both in Bach, and not as delicate as Cho in his recent Handel album. Liu is unafraid to flirt, most agreeably, with a little romanticism – there is poetry in his Bach as well as lots of musical good sense. As with his Chopin, there is a dignity to his playing which is never starchy and always classy. He never appears to be tiptoeing his way through the business of playing this music on a modern Steinway – there is a pleasing robustness to the sounds he makes that had me thinking of older Russian pianists.
Which brings me back to the problem with such short format digital albums when they work – I want more!
David McDade
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