It's a measure of how far the period-instrument movement has come that the word "piano" doesn't appear anywhere in the graphics for this recording of Bach keyboard concertos by pianist Nick van Bloss and the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by David Parry. Van Bloss takes pains in his booklet notes to justify piano performance, and furthermore pianistic performance, but he needn't have been defensive: these are crisp readings that won't unduly distress harpsichord partisans. Van Bloss adds some bass octaves and some ...
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It's a measure of how far the period-instrument movement has come that the word "piano" doesn't appear anywhere in the graphics for this recording of Bach keyboard concertos by pianist Nick van Bloss and the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by David Parry. Van Bloss takes pains in his booklet notes to justify piano performance, and furthermore pianistic performance, but he needn't have been defensive: these are crisp readings that won't unduly distress harpsichord partisans. Van Bloss adds some bass octaves and some light pedal in the slow movements, but he is not ladling sentiment over the music. The pianist's calling card is his uncanny precision, effectively deployed in polyphonic passages. Van Bloss manages the trick of making the keyboard emerge clearly from the texture without turning it into a Romantic solo part. It's not clear exactly how the English Chamber Orchestra realized van Bloss' instructions to play vibrato "in a way that produced a 'warming' of the tone," but the effect from this...
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