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American Record Guide: (11/2019) 
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Hyperion
CDA68244



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When a pianist or harpsichordist performs one of the Toccatas, he is probably aware that these are early works—at the very least, he would know that it is very much unlike works like the WTC or the Partitas. So then, the vexing question: how should one play Bach’s early harpsi-chord music? In the many releases of the Toccatas I have reviewed, performers— especially pianists—seem to treat them as early, immature works—more diverting oddities unlike the great works that Bach would later compose. Evan Shinners falls into this lamentable category (J/A 2013). Even with harpsichordists who are aware of the stylus phantasticus style of 17th Century music on which Bach probably modeled the pieces, the results are, more or less, a superficial, surface-oriented approach to the toccatas’ untamed excesses. Two exceptions among others: Anthony Newman on Vox (S/O 1996) and Peter Watchorn (N/D 2000).

Mahan Esfahani offers a wide-ranging, historically informed answer to this question that I find extremely attractive and convincing. After a thorough investigation of the numerous sources for these works he makes an extraordinary, but to my mind commonsensical, claim: there is in fact no “authentic” way of performing the works; rather, they

seem to invite, perhaps more than s me of his other works, what he calls a “dialogic” relationship between performer and text, one that elevates the former to something much like a co-creator.
 

Another important context for these pieces emerges more clearly in the playing itself rather than from the essay: the great organ fantasies and toccatas with which Bach would dazzle audiences for decades. He does this in part with his choice of instrument by Jukka Ollikka of Prague; it follows theories and surviving examples of Michael Mietke’s instruments, including what Esfahani calls “the hypothetical addition of an extra soundboard for the 16’ register and a cheek inspired by Pleyel, 1912. The instrument is over 9 feet long, had a wide range, and includes registers of 16’, two 8’, and 4’ with buff on the upper manual. Finally, the soundboard is made from a carbon-fiber. With this instrument, Esfahani easily captures the grand sonorities of the organo pleno if not all of its most colorful solo stops. The two 8’ courses are very colorful and tender, quite powerful when coupled, the 4’ brilliant but unobtrusive, and the 16’ (which is used often) extremely robust.

In addition to sound, there’s a depth to the interpretations that also reminds me very much of the famous organ works, which I believe have a far more extensive recorded tradition and all the richness of various interpretation that that implies. Certain passages in the closing fugue of the D-minor are suddenly punctuated by full-voiced chords, which sound out as an organ would. (The wet acoustic of the venue, Parish Church of St John the Baptist in Loughton, Essex, doesn’t hurt either). He often takes quite dramatic pauses between widely contrasting sections and introduces a variety of phrasing and rubato that seems deeply considered. Esfahani is a serious iconoclast (not a dabbler like Shinners or others): toward the end of his notes he remarks, “I did occasionally change even the most reliable readings in favour of what I felt was the intended rhetoric behind the notation”. That such moments seem very clear to me but also musically persuasive is a demonstration of his deeply committed, intelligent, but highly individual performances. This is needed in Bach—and in much other music performance.

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