The six Partitas are virtually a compendium of Bach's keyboard styles, with toccatas and French overtures, fugues and fantasies and all manner of dances. Trevor Pinnock rises to a new level of mastery in his new recording of them. We all know about the brilliance of his fingerwork and his beautifully sprung, ebullient rhythms; but here he goes further, showing a true grandeur of manner that embraces Bach at his most serious and pensive, his most learned, and – above all – his most vividly rhetorical.
Pinnock takes his time over the music: these are measured readings of the partitas, thought through, viewed whole. The natural and spontaneous musicianship of old is still there, but now it's given extra depth and meaning through the carefully judged articulation, JS Bach Instrumental the tiny moments of hesitation, all within a fluent larger rhythm, that lend extra point and shape to a phrase, a group of phrases, an entire musical paragraph.
The warm, rather resonant recording beautifully captures the rich sound of his instrument – a David Way copy from 1983 of a Hemsch original – as well as the detail of his playing. There could hardly have been a happier return to the recording studio for Pinnock than this fine set.