The "4 Pleasure" title of this series from Virgin Classics both indicates its presumed purpose and tells you there are four CDs in the box. But it makes these sets look like they came out of Prince's classical CD library, and the photo on the cover of this set, showing a hand lining up shells on top of a mossy rock, is probably enough to get the box put in the new age bin by a hurried clerk. Thinking inside the box, however, we find a solid reissue of some classic
Bach performances by Dutch harpsichordist
Gustav Leonhardt.
Leonhardt offered beautifully recorded
Bach albums on meticulously restored harpsichords of the composer's time, and the result was harpsichord music with a big, ringing sound that got the ears of people who until then had preferred their
Bach on a piano. He was never in better form than on these recordings, made in 1984 and 1986 in the Doopsgezinde Gemeente Kerk in Haarlem, the Netherlands. The English Suites (no one is quite sure why they are so called, but there's nothing particularly English about them) and Partitas are sets of mostly short, dance-inspired movements invested by
Bach with dizzying, coruscating contrapuntal complexity.
Leonhardt's approach is sometimes described as severe, and there are keyboard players who find more gemütlichkeit in
Bach's music. But the harpsichord is probably the instrument of choice with these suites, and the tense muscularity of
Leonhardt's playing makes for a very satisfyingly exciting ride in the faster movements. One problematic issue to note is that
Leonhardt eliminates some repeats in some of the longer slow movements, a risky move with
Bach, but this longtime scholar-performer surely had his reasons. On the whole, though there are still the
Glenn Gould and
Murray Perahia recordings available for those who like a sound world closer to our own, these
Leonhardt discs make a very good choice for a basic
Bach library and, with their low price, a good start on
Bach for anybody. The liner notes are a bit spare but informative enough.