Aimard's quirky conversation with Bach

In a recital as formidable as Pierre-Laurent Aimard's traversal of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, one starts by describing what Tuesday's performance at the Perelman Theater was not. More a Bach interloper than a specialist, Aimard had none of the insistent analysis of Glenn Gould, little of the radiant glow of Andras Schiff or Angela Hewitt, and only occasionally the operatic angst of Zhu Xiao-Mei.

So what was left? J.S. Bach for starters, and a somewhat more specific view of the music than on Aimard's Deutsche Grammophon CD, just recorded in March. Though Aimard can't be called a paragon of French pianism, he has the kind of unprettified rationality one associates with Yvonne Loriod, one of his primary teachers, which yields unexpected results.

From the opening arpeggios of the famous C-major opening of this cycle of 48 preludes and fugues, one didn't hear Bach on a relentless mission to methodically explore all possibilities for its own sake. Each reiteration of the prelude's simple eight-note figure seemed to have a new color and meaning - with Aimard finding ways to accommodate that without distorting the music's silhouette.

Later, he played with the kind of tempo changeability that's common with harpsichords, sometimes shifting subtly within a phrase. The final chords of any given prelude and fugue were often broken into arpeggios rather than sounded simultaneously, often with a distinct color and sense of finality.

Except when not. Such techniques were never used consistently enough to become predictable. Some later preludes don't end conclusively at all. And while other pianists might mask that with a slackening of tempo that implies finality, Aimard let Bach be quirky. Some of the more gnarled fugue themes weren't smoothed down in the least. And as much as existential crises probably weren't talked about in the religious circles Bach inhabited, Aimard let the composer have them in several preludes.

The danger of playing Bach on piano, as opposed to harpsichord, is that the bigger piano sound will obscure some of the music's less prominent voices. Mostly, I heard a complete sound picture, even in some of the later fugues when Bach starts to blur the function of the music's various mechanics.

Longer fugues weren't as well sustained as one might hope. Also, Aimard's rejection of surface glisten is perhaps one reason why the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society concert had a few intermission departures. Still, I wouldn't hesitate to call the concert a benchmark. Without question, he carved out his Bach niche. I hope he revisits it often.