Bach: Partitas Nos. 1, 5 & 6

His recordings with works by Bach all enjoy reference character and regularly belong to the bestsellers in the international classical music charts. "Die Zeit described Perahia's first CD with Bach's Partitas 2, 3 and 4 as "wonderfully floating, free and cantabile," while Die Welt praised this recording as having "a ravishing sense of rhythm, of the smallest delays that give the flow of notes their first vitality and spontaneity," and the leading classical music journals also gave this CD top ratings. On October 17, Perahia received the Echo Klassik 2010 for Best Solo Recording of the Year - (17th-18th Century) Piano. Now the second part is released with Perahia's recording of the Bach Partitas, and Perahia is also able to give the Partitas 1, 5 and 6 a depth and sensuality that virtually intoxicates the listener. The recording was made in the famous Nalepa Studios in Berlin, a place whose almost enchanted magic and acoustic magnificence have also been transferred to this production. "If the listener abandons himself to these processes in sound, he may rave about perfection, and Perahia's inexhaustibly blossoming design is so coherent from beginning to end, as if it could not be any other way." 

"Serene, but not worldly, balanced, but never boring, always wide awake, always bringing everything to the point - this is how Perahia's sovereign Bach playing presents itself here. [ ] Perahia's Bach affords himself the unexcited-free play of forms, has nothing to prove." (WAZ) "Perahia develops his Bach from meditation, from balance. But it is not hypnosis, but surprisingly a vivification [ ] With Perahia, on the other hand, the pieces are organisms that first unfold their life before our ears. This is music that begins to grow out of nothing. The heightening that Perahia builds up, for example in the contemplative Allemande of the B-flat major Partita, seems completely simple, laconic, innocent and yet monstrous. As a listener, one thinks: this has to be like this, why doesn't anyone else do it? [...] Hardly any pianist fulfills the phases of oceanic calm in Bach's Sarabanden so maturely. Here the paradox of brilliant piano playing succeeds: complete control in lostness of the world. Perahia knows that pure Bach happiness also includes irritation." (Die Zeit) "Perahia plumbs the dances and character pieces to this point eloquently and nobly, multi-faceted and buoyant as well as with a clear weightlessness and serious depth." (Rondo) "Serene thought pieces from a master of musical devotion." (Kulturspiegel)  "[...] that with an eminent sound control [...] and for his abilities of phrasing alone Perahia would have already secured a place in the pianistic Olympus. His slender tone, avoiding any tonal harshness, guarantees the listenability of each individual voice even in polyphonic interweaving [...] grippingly rhythmic [...] highly brilliant, full of lightness and southern joie de vivre." (Stereo) "If one wanted to summarize what has been said succinctly, one could say: Perahia's Bach playing aims at the greatest possible cantabile of the individual voice and at the greatest possible plasticity of the polyphonic movement. The latter gains a spatiality that, as it were, refers us back to the original source of Bach's instrumental music: to vocal polyphony." (NDR Kultur) "A reference recording without romanticizing ballast and historical dryness." (Aachener Zeitung)