Bach: 6 French Suites [CD]

The fourth stage of Francesco Tristano's Bach journey with naïve is the complete set of six French Suites (BWV 812-817, c. 1722-1725). This work often leaves performers somewhat disconcerted, and few performers play it in it's entirety. It's spareness and almost ingenuous simplicity conceal the quintessence of aesthetic form. The restrained writing and the radical brevity of it's ideas and motifs belie a subtle chemistry of contrasts, for example in the Suite in E major, BWV 817. This gem, comprising nine finely balanced movements, offers an almost unique overview of the Baroque dance repertoire (Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gavotte, Bourrée, Gigue, Polish Minuet, Little Minuet {à la française}). Francesco Tristano performs the revised version of the Suite, prefaced by the Prelude in E major from Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier.The cycle of six French Suites remains the first through which this Luxembourg pianist immersed himself deeply and enduringly in Bach, admiring as he does their quiet beauty and curious serenity. For him, the French Suites are lyrical and melodic yet also incisive, as if imbued with vivid spontaneity and without the slightest hint of haste. Density through compression is perhaps the true aim of the French Suites-after the expansion of forms at work in the six English Suites (the only earlier surviving set of French-style suites by J. S. Bach; see naïve V 8828, 2025)-before we reach the miraculous synthesis achieved in the first part of the Clavier-Übung (the six Partitas; naïve V 8619, 2024).In this new stage of his journey with Bach-a composer whose complete keyboard works he ultimately hopes to record-Francesco Tristano favors a really warm sound, very soft, underscoring the more intimate tone of the collection (e.g. Suite BWV 814, Allemande; Suite BWV 815, Sarabande; Suite BWV 813, Air), in marked contrast to the more trumpet-like atmospheres that emerged from the double album comprising the six English Suites, for instance, released in spring 2025. With his customary delicacy, Breno Rotatori faithfully conveys the quest for purity that permeates these compositions in his six sumptuous photographs, one for each of the six Suites, all of them in black and white.