Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
The Well Tempered Clavier: Book II, BWV 870-893
Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)
rec. 2025, Teldex Studio, Berlin
Pentatone PTC5187462 [119]
I have greatly admired Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s playing in the past, with his Messiaen Catalogue d’oiseaux still much appreciated (review), but when it comes to Bach I was less keen on his Deutsche Grammophon recording of The Art of Fugue. This Well Tempered Clavier Book II will inevitably sit next to another Deutsche Grammophon recording from 2014, with Aimard’s Well Tempered Clavier Book I an intriguing companion to this release from Pentatone.
Listening again to Book I is a reminder of the ‘mixed-bag’ response I’ve had to Aimard’s Bach in the past. There is technique in abundance and some moments of sublime beauty in the playing along the way. These qualities stumble occasionally and frustratingly however over some strikingly accented mannerisms, a few examples of plodding tempi, and some touches of rubato that give more of an impression of rhythmic instability than expressiveness of touch.
Just over a decade later and the opening to WTC Book II didn’t bode well to my ears. The Prelude in C Major sounds like someone picking their way across a river on some uneven stepping stones, sometimes darting forward, at other moments hesitating briefly. The following fugue settles down better in this regard, but here and in the following C minor pairing Aimard has a mildly odd way of ‘placing’ certain notes so that the flow of the music is never entirely comfortable, a feature that crops up throughout this recording.
I am by no means a stickler for metronomic regularity in Bach, and as evidenced by Mahan Esfahani’s WTC Book I on the Hyperion label (review) there are plenty of ways of introducing expressive rubato without micro-managing every bar. Aimard can flow nicely when he wants to, as in the pedal-rich first half of the Prelude in C-sharp Major, but it seems one will have to get used to and fall in love with his at times idiosyncratic articulation and phrasing in this collection if it’s going to become a keeper.
Aimard comes in at about four minutes longer over the whole set when compared with Till Fellner on the ECM label (review), and slower tempi in pieces such as the Prelude in C-Sharp Minor no doubt accounts for this. I don’t mind an expansive tempo here, but Aimard keeps us firmly grounded with his solid touch and fairly flat dynamics in this piece, where a more magical atmosphere would be more desirable. There is a nicely sustained quality in, for instance, the Prelude in E major, but here instead of the stepping stones we are following the flow of water in the stream with its associated eddies. The following fugue is stately and worldly-wise but quite heavy on what we used to call ‘the loud pedal’, a feature that on the other hand has quite a halo effect on the Prelude in F major.
Personal quirks in these pieces need by no means be a negative, and not knowing quite what to expect from one prelude and fugue to the next can have its own feel of exploration and adventure. One has only to listen to Glenn Gould’s waywardness and imperfections to hear a unique individuality of character that has its myriad fans. Only you will know if Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s playing in this Well-Tempered Clavier Book II speaks to you more than it has to me. If this were a live performance I have no doubt that we would all be on our feet and whistling in approval by the end, but the problem with recordings like this is that, while you can play them more than once, you may find you’re not fired up to do so.
Aside from Aimard’s ‘front-loading’ of certain notes and phrases this is not a Book II that has caused any real kind of excitement for this reviewer. Moving through the set each piece reveals a dynamic level that rarely introduces real contrast. Of course there is contrast between pieces, but Aimard to some extent treats the piano like a harpsichord, keeping up the level from begin to end and in between, where the mind and ear sometimes longs for a bit of extra stimulation from an instrument that we know has this capability. It’s not entirely clear what has been done in the recording, but there is a suggestion that the piano has a different placement and microphone set-up for certain types of music, Aimard writing that “its position and orientation in the recording studio influence the shape and breath of the sound… the aim to generate sound sources that respond to the polyphonic and expressive needs of each piece, and to let them breathe in the right acoustic space.” While not as extreme as Glenn Gould’s experimental ‘acoustic orchestration’ in his recordings of the Sibelius Sonatinas, some changes are indeed audible at times listening through headphones. In the end these are fairly subtle switches in perspective however, and don’t help much if the playing itself is giving you the heebie-jeebies.
I dislike writing negative reviews and have been sitting on this one for weeks, coming back to Aimard’s recording several times just to make sure I wasn’t just in a bad mood on first contact. I do, however, stand by all of the comments made. These are ‘serious’ performances, with dance rhythms not at all bouncy or playful. As such you would hope that on the other hand there would be some extra emotional depth, but this is also a set that lacks ‘ah’ moments. Where Angela Hewitt (review) can bring out lyrical lines with an almost vocal quality, Aimard doesn’t ‘sing’ in his verticality of touch. Sviatoslav Richter’s complete WTC on RCA has that extra touch of memorable Slavic profundity, and I still have a soft spot for Sergey Schepkin on the Ongaku Records label (review). If you want to go full-on Bach with all of the trimmings I would also still very much recommend Roger Woodward on the Celestial Harmonies label (review).
Not everything here is terrible here by any means, but by the end of the rather lumpish Fugue in G-sharp Minor halfway through disc two I did find myself somewhat losing the will to live, and that’s not what you want from Bach.
Dominy Clements
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