Benjamin Alard JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH The Complete Works for Keyboard 1

The first instalment of Benjamin Alard’s projected complete keyboard works of JS Bach is entirely auspicious. Subtitled ‘The Young Heir’, this three-disc set includes works performed on the harpsichord and organ, dating from (roughly) 1699-1705, the young composer’s childhood and apprentice years. The first CD includes works of musicians with whom Bach would have been familiar, among them members of his own extended musical family, including the greatest of his forebears, his great uncle Johann Christoph Bach, and his father-in-law, Johann Michael Bach. Also included are works by Frescobaldi, Froberger, Pachelbel, Marchand and de Grigny, along with Georg Böhm, whose work was particularly influential on the young Bach.

Alard is equally accomplished on both the organ and the harpsichord and moves from one to the other with facility. The organ is used not just for the early chorales but also, on the third disc, for the Capriccio on the departure of his brother, BWV992, an effective choice. The three discs are organised both chronologically and geographically, documenting the early peregrinations of the composer as he emerged from the musical milieu of his brother’s town of Ohrdruf to his time in Lüneberg, where Böhm was a central figure, and his first professional posting in Arnstadt. Not surprisingly, the first two discs feel a bit scattered and unfocused, while the third reveals the composer coming into his own and contains the most substantial of the early works.

Alard’s playing is a delight, clean and sensible, with striking agogic expressive power. On the early discs, his performances of works by Froberger and Kuhnau (a spare and melancholy little sonata) are even more striking than the sometimes more workmanlike chorales and early fugues. But the third disc is full of evidence that the rest of this cycle will be a collection to be reckoned with, including fine renditions of the Suite in A major, BWV832, and the early, delightfully naive Aria variata alla maniera italiana, BWV989. Both the organ (from the Sainte-Aurélie church in Strasbourg, originally built in 1718) and the harpsichord (by Émile Jobin, based on a 1612 Ruckers and a 1747 Joannes Dulken instrument) are colourful and well suited to the repertoire. This is a project to watch with anticipation. (Philip Kennicott / Gramophone)

David Greilsammer BAROQUE CONVERSATIONS

This Sony-label debut release by Israeli pianist David Greilsammer has much in common with his earlier recording Fantasie Fantasme, released on the Naxos label. In fact, here Greilsammer might be said to have refined the ideas on the earlier album. Both combine contemporary and mainstream repertory, and apparently Greilsammer has an inclination toward pretentious graphic design. But here the focus is tightened. Greilsammer constructs a sequence of four Baroque three-movement "pieces," each consisting of three compositions. Of these sets of three, the outer two are Baroque works, while the center is a contemporary piece, commissioned in two cases by Greilsammer himself from contemporary Israeli composers. Greilsammer balances these works cleverly: the structure of the sets of three is not fast-slow-fast, but not simply random, either; the pieces instead are linked by motive and mood, with the modern work emerging as just a slight shift from what precedes it, and as a logical introduction to the finale. One might make several objections along the way: the Handel Suite for keyboard in D minor, HWV 447, with its four movements, disturbs the plan for no very good reason, and Greilsammer's readings of the Baroque pieces, especially the opening Gavotte et Six Doubles of Rameau, are a bit too dreamy, a bit too obviously bent to the requirements of the project. Still, there's no denying that Greilsammer has come closer than most other performers to the grail of integrating contemporary music into a mainstream concert program, and that he has done it in a very inventive way. The combination of a Frescobaldi toccata and the Wiegenmusik of German-born composer Helmut Lachenmann, each with little figures gracefully spinning off an underlying rhythm, is especially effective. Recommended for listeners of a speculative frame of mind. (James Manheim)