Bach: Partitas nos. 1–6
Christopher Czaja Sager, piano; no orchestra or conductor.
Hänssler [catalog number not provided]. Recorded [dates not provided], Doopsgezinde Kerk, Amsterdam. Budget release, 2 discs, 136:00.
Christopher Czaja Sager’s traversal of Bach’s six keyboard partitas—published as the composer’s op. 1 when he was already in his forties—presents a curious case of interpretive schizophrenia. Here is a pianist who clearly understands these works’ French-inflected elegance, yet seems unable to decide what he actually thinks about them as a cycle.
The use of three different instruments is intriguing on paper. Less so in practice. Sager deploys a Yamaha for Partitas 1, 3, 5, and 6; a more compact Bösendorfer for no. 2; and another piano for no. 4. The Yamaha’s drier, less resonant tone suits the quick footwork of certain gigues and courantes—there is genuine clarity in the E minor Partita’s Tempo di Gavotta, where the left hand’s running commentary emerges with unusual definition. But the timbral variety feels arbitrary rather than illuminating. Did Bach’s suites really demand this?
What troubles me more is Sager’s wildly inconsistent approach to tempo and rhetoric. The B-flat Major Partita unfolds at a pace that would make a glacier impatient—his Sarabande takes nearly six minutes when Glenn Gould dispatched it in under four. This is not necessarily wrong; the music breathes, certainly, and there is time to savor Bach’s harmonic inventiveness. But then Sager races through the C minor Partita’s Capriccio with a kind of metronomic efficiency that drains it of fantasy. Where is the improvisatory spark that should animate these concluding movements?
The E minor Partita—always the most ambitious of the set, opening with that magnificent Toccata—fares best under Sager’s fingers. Here his slower tempos actually serve the music’s architecture. The Toccata’s fugal section emerges with genuine contrapuntal transparency, each voice clearly articulated without sounding pedantic. The concluding Gigue has real wit, its 3/8 rhythms bouncing along with the kind of controlled exuberance this music needs.
But listen to how he handles the D Major Partita—all sunshine and courtly grace—and you will hear a different pianist entirely. Suddenly there is stiffness where there should be dance, calculation where there should be spontaneity. The opening Ouverture sounds dutiful rather than grand, its dotted rhythms executed correctly but without the necessary swagger. Even the Gigue, typically the most straightforward movement to bring off, feels earthbound.
I keep returning to a fundamental question: did Sager conceive these as a unified cycle, or simply as six separate suites that happened to share a publication history? Everything suggests the latter. Glenn Gould, for all his eccentricities, understood that these works form a coherent journey through different Affekte and national styles. Murray Perahia grasps their overarching architecture. Angela Hewitt finds the thread that binds them. Sager does not seem interested in the question.
The recorded sound from Amsterdam’s Doopsgezinde Kerk is serviceable—perhaps a bit too much ambient bloom for my taste in Bach, but not objectionably so. The Hänssler engineering captures the different piano timbres faithfully, even if I question the artistic rationale for the timbral variety in the first place.
There are moments of genuine insight scattered throughout these 136 minutes. The A minor Partita’s Sarabande has a touching simplicity, and the G Major Partita’s Passepied trips along with appropriate lightness. But a few felicities do not compensate for the set’s fundamental lack of cohesion. This is interpretive compartmentalization masquerading as variety.
At budget price—and this is important—Sager’s set might serve as a useful supplement to a library already containing Perahia or Hewitt or even András Schiff’s thoughtful accounts. But as a primary recommendation? The unevenness is simply too pronounced. Better to spend a bit more for performances that understand these partitas not just as individual suites, but as the carefully organized compendium Bach intended when he gathered them for publication in 1731.
A disappointing missed opportunity from a pianist who clearly possesses the technical equipment these works demand, but lacks the unifying vision they deserve.
