Five years on from
his debut recording of the Goldberg
Variations, and the booklet
notes pick up on the conversation
which Sergey Schepkin was having
on the subject of Bach on the piano
with J. Quentin Parker. This interview
device for booklet notes is very
useful when it is the ideas of the
performer which count most, in music
which is so well known that it almost
runs the risk of becoming aural
wallpaper. Schepkin does however
go into quite some detail with the
inner mechanics of the music, and
the reasons for some of his artistic
decisions based on pre-existing
historical knowledge.
I was inspired
to request this set for review after
hearing some samples over the internet,
and reading the booklet notes I
now know part of the reason the
music seemed to speak to me so directly.
Schepkin’s approach to the Well-Tempered
Clavier owes more to that of
Sviatoslav Richter than to Glenn
Gould, and it is this set on RCA
GD 60949 which has been one of my
desert island recordings since I
was a teenager, having first bought
it as a Melodiya box set on LPs.
I have to admit preferring Richter’s
Book I to his Book II, but his is
still my reference in this music
on piano.
In Schepkin’s own
words, "I tried to be true
to Bach’s style the way I understand
it, to Bach’s forms and textures
the way I hear them, and to Bach’s
spirit the way I feel it."
There are inevitable romantic associations
when hearing this music played on
the piano, but these are often musical/semantic
impressions based on the sound of
the instrument – hopefully more
so than in that of the playing.
Schepkin admits "Bach’s music
is expressive and romantic!"
He never falls into what one might
call ‘romanticism’ however, and
the musical message of each prelude
and fugue is unencumbered with irritating
rubati or other mannerisms one would
associate with a later age. I don’t
think we need to be too precious
about a ‘romantic’ approach to Bach’s
music. Anyone who could father 20
children had to have some romantic
spirit, and so it is the overall
effect of the music which is most
important – assuming, as Schepkin
has, the performing practice and
expectations of the time are taken
into consideration.
Returning to Richter’s
set; I began by asking myself why
I felt it any less good than his
Book I. The recording is a little
less vibrant for some reason, and
this is an advantage which Schepkin’s
recording has as a given – the Ongaku
sound is truly excellent. It’s also
nothing to do with preferring Book
I to Book II, as I’ve come across
with some colleagues in the past.
I’ve always felt Book II of the
Well-Tempered Clavier to
be underrated, and listening to
Richter with fresh ears I find his
colour, voicing and phrasing still
to be both impressively and easily
virtuosic. There is however a sense
that the enveloping warmth which
invites you to inhabit Book I like
a favourite set of clothes is a
little further removed in Book II.
This is something hard to put into
words, but the fierceness of attack
seems that much more brutal, the
more gentle movements just a fraction
more superficial. This not always
the case, there is still much wonder
and beauty to be had throughout,
and this is just my subjective impression
when comparing the two books.
Not having Schepkin’s
Book I, yet, I cannot comment on
any differences between these two.
Schepkin does outline the essential
differences between the two books
however, and as they are 20 years
apart in J.S. Bach’s oeuvre there
are a number of stylistic developments
which makes Book II less clear-cut
as an interpretative whole. Without
going into too much detail, Schepkin
is attuned to the more galant
and extra-baroque expressive
features in the music, and to the
advances in counterpoint which takes
Book II that much further than Book
I in terms of sophistication and
an expansion beyond the more ‘liturgical’
background which infuses the earlier
set. The more strictly rhythmic
pieces such as the Prelude and
Fugue XV in G are taken with
impeccable regularity, and the expressive
freedoms which Schepkin allows himself
elsewhere are entirely idiomatic
and part of the organic flow of
the music. Taking something like
the Prelude and Fugue XVII in
A flat, this gorgeous pairing
has little lifts in the flow of
the tempo throughout, some give-and-take
which allows the lines to sing urbanely.
The essential flow of the music
isn’t stretched or pushed in macro
terms, but the internal recurrence
of certain statements are given
their full value – removing machine-like
regularity without overheating or
allowing any kind of sagging in
each movement as a whole.
Is Schepkin the
flawless Bach interpreter? From
where I stand, these things all
come down to a matter of taste.
You may find his opening Prelude
in C too slow, but just give
the music a chance to convince you
and that sensation soon vanishes.
The same has been true of every
case in which I’ve started out with
a ‘?’ from this set, and these are
few and far between in any case.
In short, if you like Sviatoslav
Richter’s Russian directness, and
feel you’d like it combined with,
say, Andras Schiff’s refinement
of touch and warmth of expression,
then you will most certainly respond
to the playing of Sergey Schepkin.
For me, he fills the gap left by
those elusive shortcomings I’ve
always felt from Richter’s Book
II; and that is saying a great deal.
Dominy Clements
Sergey Schepkin (piano) 
