When I reviewed this album back in January, I should have paired it with this release from Aya Hamada. Across both are performed the French Overture, BWV 831 and the Italian Concerto, BWV 971. Hamada adds the Toccata in D, BWV 912 alongside the Chaconne for violin, arranged for keyboard, BWV 1004.5.

The album is recorded upon an historical instrument from the Musée d’art et d’histoire in Neuchâtel. The recording, I think, is ideal for capturing the nuances of a harpsichord. When Hamada plays short notes or chords, the resulting reverberation in the room is perfect. Which is enough to say that listening to this album was a sonic delight.

The instrument, an Ruckers built originally in 1632 and expanded in 1745, has a good sound. The third movement of the Italian Concerto is one of the best ways to appreciate this instrument’s sound and difference in timbres as she switches keyboards. Her performance of the final movement is executed at a really comfortable pace, fast, but nothing too fast. The clarity between the parts recognized as tutti ritornellos and solo passages is carried out well. The instrument’s lower register is rich in overtones. Crunchy, for sure. The small flourish she adds in the last statement of the main theme is a nice touch.

The so-called French Overture, a suite, in the guise of Bach’s six partitas, is viewed by some as his seventh partita. It’s giant though, with nine movements. It may, at one point, have been considered alongside the other “partitas” as the final suite, and we know a version in C minor existed. But it’s scale is large, and considering Bach’s near-obsession with numerology, he may have ejected it to live on in a second set. Combined as a set as he has with the Italian Concerto, it’s clear that Bach wanted to contrast the high art of Italian style versus that of the French. The opening movement, constructed like an orchestral overture, is a world into itself. In the recording I recently reviewed, performed by Concerto Italiano, the piece is arranged out of its keyboard straightjacket for orchestral forces. In this recording, Hamada completes the opening movement in eight minutes; by contrast, Benjamin Alard takes over thirteen, Suzuki takes just under thirteen, as does Esfahani. Neither of the performers listed truly recreates for me, in the way Bach left this piece notated, the grandeur of the power from orchestral forces. Esfahani tries, best, likely, by using the 16 foot register on his instrument. Hamada skips the second repeat, which explains the difference in track length. I don’t have a problem with doing so, after returning to the original opening theme, it seems time to move on. Her playing throughout, however, is tasteful and assured. This is one of the very few places in Bach where we see a dynamic written; in this case, the direction of forte indicates to switch keyboards to a fuller registration, which she does nicely.

I should also note, that the six partitas can be performed on a single manual instrument, where this one seems to demand two.

The Gavottes are sharply played, brilliant, really; the feel of the Courante was less assured. The notes are all there; when listening to Suzuki play the same piece, I had the same disorientation. It’s a strange little piece, to be honest. The slightly slower tempo adopted by Christophe Rousset, for me, was easier to feel the three-beat dance.

Like the Gavottes, the Passepieds are presented with assuredness by Hamada, even in the gnarliest of spots. Bach’s ornamental writing makes for difficult execution, but I like Hamada’s interpretation; the second dance is presented as a light contrast to the opening, although there is no piano mark in the score, the contrast in dynamics follows the thematic material nicely.

Blandine Verlet’s recording of the work for Philips in the early 1980s was one I have admired; her fleetness with the Sarabande, like the Courante in this suite, more difficult for us to feel, is a better solution, but Hamada’s quick execution of the Bourées and Gigue, for me, surpass Verlet’s performance.

Bach ends the suite with a movement entitled Echo. Like the other dances that benefit from switching keyboards, this one is an exercise seemingly built for it. I like how short Hamada plays the opening figure, so crisp, so that we can hear that empty space. I could have enjoyed it more played a few clicks faster, but however when the later runs come in, the tempo seems justified.

As ‘bonus” material in this album, clocking in at 66 minutes, Hamada opens with the Toccata, BWV 912. It’s clear if you’d started with the overture-suite like I did that the same person is playing here; her short articulation in the Toccata’s opening works, especially in the space of the museum where this was recorded.

One might ask, in the context of French vs. Italian what style Bach had in mind with his toccatas; the set seems to be less about foreign style and the format is wholly something German. The work is very likely the youngest on the album, and in some ways, is a nice stylistic contrast to the concerto and overture-suite. All told, the toccata is well-played, but for me lacks a strong interpretation by the performer. There are some rather dramatic flourishes to be found in the interior of this work; the flourishes are beautifully executed, but it’s the rhetorical possibilities leading up to them that for me might have been exercised with more deliberate direction. When we get the fast section in the piece’s last quarter, it’s rendered beautifully, again, showcasing the instrument she plays upon.

The opening of the booklet spills some ink on the legitimacy of arranging Bach. The tone was set so hard, I thought, that Hamada might take it upon herself to arrange all the pieces on the album. However the purpose for discussing arrangements was to set us up for a project Hamada spent a lot of time and energy to realize: a performance of Bach’s Ciaconna from his second partita for solo violin. Her inspiration was a performance by Skip Sempé, although I think Leonhardt beat Sempé to it, on record.

The effort she undertook, to copy out Sempé’s rendition by listening to the album repeatedly, made me wince a bit, especially so when she notes that Sempé’s rendition was created by improvising against the version written for violin.

And there lies the rationale for mentioning Bach’s practice of re-writing music by other masters of his time. Her solution isn’t just a re-creation of Sempé’s, but instead, she uses it as the tabula rasa for her own working of the material. I am familiar with Sempé’s rendition (it’s good!) but did not go back to it for the context of listening to this rendition by Hamada. I don’t really care how faithfully she recreates his performance. I want to judge it on its own.

This “encore” of the album probably puts Hamada on display moreso than we saw her in the earlier tracks. I mean, she’s lived with this music for some time. She has the freedom to improvise. The model she presents—what Bach might do in arranging a work by another composer—his keyboard versions of Vivaldi’s violin concertos a good example—has freed her, I think, a bit in her approach to the music.

There is plenty of virtuosity on display, but I wouldn’t say she uses the music as virtuosic vehicle. That’s the difference, I think, between many HIPP performances of this work on violin with those by the big-name violinists from the last generation (Heifetz, Milstein, etc.). The one that stands out to me, which is available in video format, is the performance by Shunske Sato. His performance is moving without attempting to make the music about, well, his ability to produce fireworks.

When I considered Hamada’s rendition, I was catapulted a couple times away from my comfortable baroque sound world and taken to our current time. Some of her performance sounded too modern, something maybe Bach wouldn’t have done, himself? But I don’t mean that as an insult. In the twenty-first century, we should hear something that reminds us of the performer herself. And for that I think the evolution of Sempé’s blueprint has been both executed and realized on this recording.

I’d go so far to say that while the music on this album is all well-played, the final track takes things to another level. Who knows if it will inspire the next young harpsichordist to try this out, in the way that Sempé’s recording inspired Hamada?

I think this makes the third album I’ve reviewed by Ms. Hamada. For me, this has been her strongest effort. Well done!

For those interested, here’s a live recording from July 2017 upon a Yoshida harpsichord of the Bach Ciaccona, arranged. (I think the instrument used in this record is superior, but damn, isn’t that gold casework and stand beautiful?)