BACH Italian Concerto, BWV 971; Overture in the French Manner, BWV 831 • Benjamin Alard (hpd) • ALPHA 180 (48:52)


The very first acquisition for any record collector seeking to build a library of harpsichord music should be Bach’s Clavier-Übung II . Published in Leipzig in 1735, it is Bach’s ultimate statement on the two prevailing styles of (secular) European music. At the very time that a bitter debate was raging in Paris on the relative merits of French and Italian music, German musicians such as Bach were embracing both styles by incorporating elements of Italian and French instrumental music into their works. Yet Bach went further than the rest; in the Italian Concerto, for example, he amalgamates the instrumental style of Corelli and Vivaldi with his own musical language, creating a one-of-a-kind piece that could never have been written by the likes of Telemann, Fasch, or Handel. Manfred Bukofzer calls Bach’s music “the fusion of national styles”, and the Italian Concerto is the perfect example of this. Aside from being tremendously exciting, BWV 971 is a pinnacle work of the Baroque that belongs in every library.


Prior to BWV 831, Bach had written many pieces in the French style, although he seldom used the characteristic double-dotted, bipartite ouverture as the opening movement. In the French Suites, for example, Bach typically begins with an allemande, in the English Suites with a prelude. The Fourth Partita, BWV 828, does begin with a grand ouverture , but this is a relatively isolated example. At 13 minutes, the opening Ouverture of BWV 831 is much longer than anything Bach had written previously in the form, a signal, perhaps, of how important this work was to him. The rest of the suite is filled with characteristic dances (gavotte, passepied, sarabande, bourée), many with doubles, although interestingly, there is no allemande. The work concludes with a Gigue and a joyous Echo; if the latter is played with proper spirit, it’s enough to get you up out of your chair and dancing around the room.


Benjamin Alard is a young French harpsichordist and organist who has a number of titles to his credit on the Alpha label. He has exactly one prior mention in Fanfare : Jerry Dubins called Alard’s recording of the partitas “the end-all and be-all” in 34:1. I haven’t heard that set yet (it’s on my “to-do” list), but I’m prepared to believe what Dubins says, because Alard’s playing on the present CD is very strong indeed. The watchwords are grace, precision, and a real sense of personality. For most recorded performances of the Italian Concerto , there exists a kind of consensus tempo in the outer movements; most performers, Alard included, cleave to the norm by adopting a healthy allegro and presto . The middle Andante is where the harpsichordist has an opportunity to make the performance his own. Alard plays the recurring bass motif (two eighth-note Ds) less ponderously than most; he does this by shortening the notes ever so slightly and inserting some daylight between them. The effect is perfect, because the music never stagnates, it moves along at a proper clip (the verb andante means, after all, to walk or move along). In BWV 831, all is well until the concluding Echo; Alard’s laid-back tempo here robs the music of a certain amount of drive and spark. It’s an interesting interpretative choice, but I refer the reader to the remarkable David Cates on Wildboar as an example of how outrageously exciting this piece can be in the right hands.


In Fanfare 34:2, I reviewed a Ramée CD with a similar program— Clavier-Übung II plus the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue—played by another young Frenchman, Pascal Dubreuil. Equally impressive—in fact, if you were to compare passages from the two CDs side-by-side, I suspect the tempos and other interpretative details would match up quite well. Choosing between the two comes down to the instruments, and perhaps price and availability. Dubreuil’s harpsichord, a copy of a Ruckers mis à grand ravalement , is sonorous and ideally recorded. Alard’s instrument, a copy of an unspecified German original by Anthony Sidey, has a singing treble and a slightly acerbic bass, making Bach’s part-writing unusually clear. The engineering is equally good. You pays yer money and makes yer choice.


FANFARE: Christopher Brodersen

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Trio Sonatas for organ, masterpieces in their intrinsic poetic power, were composed between 1723 and 1725, in his early days as Kantor in Leipzig. They are performed here by Benjamin Alard, First Prize winner in the organ section of the Freiburg Bach Competition. After the success of the Red, Yellow, Blue, Pink and White collections (a total of sixty reissues) which gave a new lease of life to the pearls of the Baroque catalogues from our house labels, here are fourteen new titles which offer a chance to discover other treasures, whether Baroque or dating from an earlier or later era. Like the most recent series, this sixth instalment opens out onto the Classical repertory (Mozart by Ensemble 415 and Chiara Banchini) and the Renaissance (Févin by Doulce Mémoire and Denis Raisin Dadre); recordings that are an integral part of Alpha’s identity and history. Fourteen reissues performed by the leading musicians in the field, most of which received one or more awards on their original release. Proper booklets accompany the discs, with notes in three languages (French, English, German). Photographers from all over the world have been selected to illustrate the covers, this time with the guiding thread of the color green, a symbol of nature, fertility...and hope!

The three works on this album evoke the worlds of commedia dell'arte (Pulcinella), Don Quixote (El retablo de maese Pedro) and picaresque Spain (the Harpsichord Concerto). Telling their stories with color, rhythm and humor, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Pablo Heras-Casado and Benjamin Alard (playing a sumptuous Pleyel harpsichord) invite us to an exhilarating fireworks display.

In this new series, Paul Agnew and Les Arts Florissants invite us to follow the creative itinerary of J. S. Bach through the times and cities in which he lived. The first instalment introduces us to a young master who remained faithful to the north German tradition of the sacred concerto, but already displayed an intensely personal invention.

This latest MarchVivo release is a remastering of the concert given by Benjamin Alard at the Fundación Juan March on 1 February 2020 as part of a series entitled The Couperins at the harpsichord. The album focuses on the stylistic connections between different members of the most significant family in the history of the French Baroque: the Couperins. The harpsichord epitomized the intimacy and sophistication of salon music and, with the repertoire they composed for their instrument, the clavecinistes français helped forge a distinctive national style. This was renewed and enlivened by successive generations of the Couperin dynasty as they introduced innovative aspects of contemporary Italian style into their works, thereby creating an eloquent new idiom that was to have a lasting influence on the history of keyboard music.