Bach & l’Italie Works by JS Bach, Vivaldi, A Scarlatti, Marcello Justin Taylor (harpsichord) Alpha Classics ALPHA998 71:53 mins
This thoughtfully planned programme exploring Bach’s affinities with his Italian contemporaries includes his famous Concerto ‘in the Italian style’ and several reworkings of concertos by the Venetian composers Vivaldi and Alessandro Marcello. We also hear how the Italian Baroque idiom percolates more generally through to Bach: everywhere are suggestions of the free-flowing recitatives and lyrical arias of Italian Baroque opera or the fiery ‘stylus fantasticus’ of Italian instrumental music. For instance, the sequence opens with a Toccata by Alessandro Scarlatti which leads into Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, BWV 903, in which the Italian extempore style fuels a work of dizzying virtuosity.
French-American harpsichordist Justin Taylor brings youthful vitality and flair to these performances, responding to Bach’s ever-changing idiom with quicksilver playing: good examples are the mercurial E minor Toccata, BWV 914 which Taylor orchestrates to an explosive climax of violin-inspired bariolages and arpeggiated chords, or the ruminative ‘Organ’ Concerto, BWV 596 and its diabolically virtuosic companion piece, BWV 594 – both works based on originals by Vivaldi.
Throughout, there’s a weightless energy to the playing: in the opening movement of BWV 974, Taylor captures the light bounce of the ‘spiccato’ bowing technique of the original, while the hot-tempered rhythms of the C minor Prelude, BWV 921 are played with the wild lick of bebop. Admirable, too, are the colours and quasi-orchestral timbres that he draws from the noble 1730 harpsichord housed in the Château of Assas, France.
Kate Bolton-Porciatti