Bach: Well-tempered Clavier, Book 1 - O'Riley

This performer’s name – Christopher O’Riley – was new to me. His website reveals he’s a teacher in addition to a performer, bringing particular focus to his work from Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier. My first impression when I come across new recordings featuring major works by Bach is how they might break any new ground. One could say the same of any new recording of a much-recorded work. This becomes even more important to me when Bach is presented upon instruments different from which he may have envisioned his music performed.

Phrasing in music speaks to how we frame recognizable shapes in music—often connected with melodies. It is difficult to think about this without referring to our own training and sensitivity to how musical phrases sound, or ought to sound. If you’ve been conservatory trained, you’re given rules about how to think about phrasing.

If you are like me and have attended or watched recordings of masterclasses, often a lot of time is devoted to improving one’s phrasing. My own journey with baroque music has taught me that smaller phrases—groupings of notes—were considered rhetorical devices by composers. When we hear, say, the rhythmic signature of a subject in a Bach fugue, as an example, it becomes plausible for many of us to hear one or more ways on how we can group those notes, we can recognize shape on a micro-level, in addition to hearing how many measures together can form a longer phrase (see Dr. Laurin’s paper for exquisite detail).

While more typically heard in the interpretations of HIPP musicians, O’Riley seems to be aiming for this level of focus in this recording. That’s not to say this is an historical practice-inspired approach, because I think it’s something completely different. So different to be polarizing.

When I play at the piano—no slave to any one approach—no true way of playing the piano—I’ve tried messing around with timing, articulation, and have done things that probably made the music sound worse. But as a creative individual, in the private space of my own head, why not try some of these ideas out?

(I took these ideas into my own interpretation once and presented them to a piano professor who quickly admonished me. "That's not the way we play Bach!")

O’Riley’s approach with phrasing—and breaking longer phrases into more constitutional groupings and differentiating them with articulation, dynamics, and in some cases timing—almost feels like de-constructing Bach. In some cases they had me confused. But more often, bemused. Like, “why not?” or “this is interesting!”

The close miking of this recording puts us up close with O’Riley’s instrument, helping to present these variations in playing in a revealing way.

When I auditioned his album first in near field (up close to the loudspeakers) the way his piano was recorded greatly bothered me. The lower notes of his instrument are panned right; the higher notes on the left. If this were a binaural recording, we’d expect the opposite, that the lower notes would be on the left. Liner notes were not provided with my streamed version of this album via Qobuz, so I cannot speak to why the recording was made this way. I am fully aware that I could switch my left and right outputs into my amplifier but I found the initial negative reaction I had was assuaged somewhat when I returned to a normal seated position further away from the speakers.

This detail aside, I returned to getting into O’Riley’s performances. I of course went to the end, and my favorite prelude-fugue pair, the ones in B minor, BWV 869. While perhaps not bettering Gulda’s masterful interpretation, I found this performance interesting. His articulation doesn’t stay consistent across the three parts, bass with two upper-melody lines. He also gets creative in the repeats. This is exactly what I admire about what’s possible when we allow ourselves some creativity with interpretation. And in this case a modern piano helps amplify the possibilities.

The same play was audible in the opening C major prelude (BWV 846.1). I’ve grown tired of this piece but in O’Riley’s hands we get it very differently rendered, which for me was a pleasant journey. The G minor prelude (BWV 861) with its trills is interesting, too? Who of us hasn’t toyed with the idea of playing a long trill like that? He’s not satisfied with only one solution, providing us variation in approach to this thematic device. In the fugue things have woken up, and his willingness to give us the sense of speeding up a bit gave me a few frissons of excitement in its novelty. Except when the fugue abruptly ends? I wanted more music, Sebastian.

It’s that light, peppy hand in the G minor fugue that is gone in the G# minor fugue, BWV 863.2. His touch starts sounding lazy, lethargic. But the alertness comes, eventually, in O’Riley’s evolution of articulation. While some pianists like to adopt a singular articulation style to a particular piece of music, especially for repertoire that did not demand (on the page) so much variation, O’Riley’s technique allows him to very cleanly pivot between styles. No, it’s not a typical approach. But I decided after a few tracks to keep my mind open.

In the fugue from the B-flat minor pair, BWV 867, O’Riley lets us enjoy the resonance of the piano as he did in the prelude, providing an effect that is wholly absent from performances on historical instruments. The approach with the prelude in D minor, BWV 851.1 is also impossible on a harpsichord, with the dynamic variations he inserts into the music. The falling down the stairs bit at the end is… interesting.

Some may suspect that Christopher O’Riley’s performances of Bach to be polarizing. His inflections into the music seem born not out of any historical aim. They aren’t haphazard, either, they seem to be attached to the overall shape of each piece. He’s therefore treating each prelude and fugue as an entity, while also being sensitive to the smaller units that fit to make larger phrase groups.

Gould stress-tested Bach’s music when it came to speed. He did the same, I think, playing some Mozart very slowly. O’Riley is doing something similar here in how he hears and projects Bach’s music, with a variety of articulation and dynamic changes.

My oft-referenced favorite piano recording from the 1970s by Gulda made me notice that he took each pair of prelude and fugue as its own miniature masterpiece, often giving them a treatment that conceptualized at least each individual piece as a whole. He looked for often interesting and specific interpretations to highlight each piece’s shape and design.

While philosophically related (perhaps), yes, each performer has gone out of their way to provide a bespoke interpretation for what today we call tracks. However they reflect different outcomes and likely different paths toward these outcomes.

For me, Gulda’s recording was a masterpiece. He used his technique to advance the power of Bach’s ideas.

O’Riley—if his technique belonged to oil painting instead of keyboard playing—might be said to re-render the music in an altogether different style. Pointillistic? Impressionist? Post-modern? I’m not sure of the right term but waiting for what he’ll do next is, at least during my first listens, interesting.

I know there are some who will listen to this new album and dismiss it for being too different. And not only different—they simply won’t like his interpretive solutions. They might cryout "This isn't how you play Bach!" But why not? It's true, I wouldn’t choose this set as my desert island version of Bach’s WTC 1 if I only had a small suitcase. But I should love to sit down with this set again.

Breaking tradition for me is something worth exploring and we have to support those in search of hearing things in new ways. O’Riley does present some compelling drama in the way he performs the Well-tempered Clavier. Maybe that’s why I feel I’m standing at the foot of his instrument, with the lower notes on my right, and the higher ones on my left. Maybe he’s trying to turn the world of Bach performance on its head in a bigger way than I first imagined.

I’m not promising you’ll love this—but it is worth auditioning in full. For helping me hear Bach in a new way? Thank you, Mr. O’Riley.