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J. S. BACH  "ENGLISH SUITES BWV 806-811"  -  PRESS REVIEWS

... We don’t know why these six Suites are called “English” … each one starts with a prelude in a “fugato” style and goes from six to eight movements. It is a keyboard which must be played like an orchestra, while he cites, assimilates and changes the different musical styles of the time with that skill  - proper to Bach – to remain still himself.

Bacchetti falls in love with this variety of writing; he never loses sight of the complexity of the sound architecture, but he follows its beatings, its diversions, the rings that divide and multiply the linearity of the way.

His performance is very attentive to the variety of the weight of the sound, to the mobility of the narrative step and the inspiration of the moment charms him perhaps more than the rule does ...
  

The young pianist, grown up at Imola school, penetrates into Bach’s universe through the door of sound, so affecting, full of passion, but paying attention to formal structures. Invention and law.
  

... The young Andrea Bacchetti faces Bach from a definitely personal point of view, with very refined sonorities (also the quality of the recording is excellent, on a Fazioli piano), very pianistic, warm and enveloping sonorities, always supported by the pedal. …the phrasing is animated by delicate shades and by a meticulous work on timbre.

Just in the timbre we must notice one of the most peculiar Bacchetti’s features, because if the dynamics are contained, according to a philological perspective, the colour of the sound remains dark and the touch is far from the incisiveness with whom most of modern performers play Bach, Andras Schiff above all. Bacchetti’s approach is an analytical one, which on one hand shows off the structure of Bach’s counterpoint, on the other hand the secret and totally inner “cantabilità”  … with results of extraordinary poetry. 

It’s an uncommon fact when a young man comes to a Bach’s vision that is so original and coherent at the same time … an intellectual and ascetical Bach, totally inward, far away from tangible world … it’s impossible non to recognize his charm.
  

... Bach is perfectly proper to the critical “pianismo” of the young Genoese artist, meticulous in his unravelling the contrapuntal plots, self-possessed in his dynamic choices … then the reading of English Suites showed in this CD is beautiful. With a brilliant technique Bacchetti transfer Bach’s harpsichord atmospheres to the keyboard of his piano in an architectonic vision of lucid expositive and emotional conceit.
  

... After Decca CD published in 2001 with Luciano Berio’s pianistic compositions, which consecrates Bacchetti as a favoured witness of his Master’s heritage … now the double record (always for Decca) with six Bach’s English Suites confirms Bacchetti as a great performer … Rigour and imagination are those categories which are the foundations of pages composed like a systematic reiteration of a precise structural pattern … rigour and imagination are categories displayed by Bacchetti within a performance which stands out for its beauty of sound, for the grace-notes: pieces to be listened and re-listened to with renewed wonder.
  

... Andrea Bacchetti belongs to the narrow crowd of young Italian pianist honouring our “concertismo” … A reading of English Suites that is worthy of the highest esteem from philological and stylistic side, a reading that convinces us again that Kantor from Lipsia’ s works played on the modern “Gran Coda” instead of on the original harpsichord don’t play out of tone at all, confuting the traditionalist... 
  

... What makes Bacchetti’s performance particularly captivating is the sense of naturalness of the talking that he takes out from the writing; without neither forcings nor transgressions, obviously, but as if it was driven by an internal vitality which doesn’t necessarily mean scorching the earth and going fast, under the digital goad that such pages are able to trigger off. The talking moves with a pleasantly enveloping pace… with a taste, a measure, a fragrance that - showing a right emancipation from the mortgage of the harpsichord that sounds a bit forced in many executions – rescues these extraordinary pages from that sense of graceful stylisation that often becomes “maniera".
  

The worthy initiative of record company Decca goes on: this initiative highlights the best Italian talent through a series of monographic portraits that were specularly built between author and interpreter.  … Andrea Bacchetti, swift, rational, with an astonishing geometrical precision reads English Suites projecting them into the future with a tenth-century sensitivity ...
  

All the pianists of the new generation come up to Bach trying to vivify the phrasing and the colours, through the peculiar brilliance that comes from a very coarse-grain articulation of harpsichord. And Andrea Bacchetti, who is the esteemed Italian representative of that generation, isn’t an exception, even in Preludes and in Dances of the so called six English Suites, he never overdoes and he finds an already mature balance between modernity and tradition. Well-pondered.
 

... A complete pianist who has already a complete mastery of all his means, Andrea Bacchetti, endowed with a faultless technique that yet never becomes useless virtuosity but instead essential support to interpretative choices that are clear sighted and sometimes keen, always very coherent … Andrea Bacchetti proposes a totally pianistic Bach, without letting the shadows of philology and of the fathers of interpretations awe himself, without renouncing a density of timbre and sound which is daughter of our contemporaneusness.
  

... Completely inside the world of Bach’s Suites, Andrea Bacchetti performed them all in a series of concerts, and now a double CD comes out with six English Suites Bwv 806-811, a recording which – just in relation to live exhibitions – can be considered a fixed point, a verge of maturity … 

Andrea Bacchetti, - this is a well-known fact – has in his artistic DNA the contemporary language (Berio pronounced praising words for the Genoese pianist, electing him as an interpreter of absolute level of his music). A language which leads like an upside-down telescope Bacchetti’s approach towards all that goes backwards, as far as music is concerned. … A clear and rigorous interpretation, a Bach who is driven by pure language that shapes himself on the language of dance with fancy, dream lightings of detached gallantry, without overdoing, without anything unfounded.
  

... a lively personality, driven by a slight inquietude and by a cultural curiosity that leads him towards the most various haunts, on the soloist ground as well as on the chamber one. … What makes Bacchetti’s performance particularly captivating is the sense of naturalness of the talking that he takes out from the writing; without neither forcings nor transgressions, obviously, but as if it was driven by an internal vitality which doesn’t necessarily mean scorching the earth and going fast, under the digital goad that such pages are able to trigger off. The talking moves, passing from a dancer to another, with a pleasantly enveloping pace… with a taste, a measure, a fragrance that - showing a right emancipation from the mortgage of the harpsichord that sounds a bit forced in many executions – rescues these extraordinary pages from that sense of graceful stylisation that often becomes “maniera”.
  

... Fazioli piano moderates with the amber colour of its voice the sharp sonorities and the performer’s Enlightement objectivity; Andrea Bacchetti often abandons himself to moments of intense timbre and psychological sensibility.
  

  BILL      
From wonder child to great performer - Two days of Bach for Andrea Bacchetti
New CD recorded in a record-time by the young Genoese pianist  
il Giornale  June 1^st, 2006  - (FeR)
 

... the ex genius-child, keen on music and football, was able to grow as far as age and skill and expressive maturity are concerned, and he renews himself concert after concert, record after record. Until he came to Bach, very concentrated, inspired, respectful of tradition and - at the same time – devoid of conditionings, resolute and determined to “perform” without “forcing” ...
  

… with this record Andrea Bacchetti wants to introduce himself as a complete performer starting from Bach’s literature “for keyboard”, a risky fund for anyone, after Glenn Gould put his hand on it, And he does it with an instrument that is a pride of the big Italian building tradition: a Fazioli (F278) piano… what cancels every doubt is the fact that Bacchetti warms the clearness of articulations with “humanitas”: without such a humanitas all great Bach’s music would be a cold exercise of composition.
  

… “Decca” launches on record market other two young emerging performers of keyboard, engaged in two complete Bach’s works, the “Six English Suites”. We are talking about Ramin Bahrami and Andrea Bacchetti, the former was born in Teheran and the latter in Genoa … These two main Bach’s works find high-level performances for right balance of sound, admirable touch, sense of style and careful interpretative choice of the grace-notes, making these recordings become important documents we can refer to …
  

… In the eternal dilemma whether exploit or not the greater chances of expression and colour of piano in comparison with harpsichord, Andrea Bacchetti finds a point of balance, between philology and “modern” freedom. Then, if the dynamics are restrained with uniformity and without excessive sudden variations in favour of a linearity that makes the clearness of counterpoint show off, the pianist feels an intimate need to intensify the thematic aspects also by changes of speed and variety of touch that free player’s imagination …
  

A few weeks ago, within a concert at Milan Conservatory, the audience could watch an extremely interesting pianistic performance – mature, intelligent, even innovating – of Goldberg Variations, the most difficult and threatening of all Bach’s masterpieces that a pianist concert performer can face. … Bacchetti offers an eloquent sample of his “Bach style”, also in a wonderful, exemplary double CD published by Decca. … Bacchetti in his Suites is a master in his own right. There aren’t “fintocemballistiche” affectations, he doesn’t tear along the keyboard: the perfect technique and the clear and limpid touch are at the service of a sober style, lacking of exhibitionism, turned towards that kind of intellectual emotion so congenial to Bach. …
  

After Glenn Gould, to go back to play Bach on piano you must have courage, or something new to say. Bacchetti faces English Suites with an aim: giving back to Bach’s page the ancient quiver of dance from which they were born… a dance without age, never avid for spaces or acrobatics, but kept by Bacchetti on his fingertip: with grace and competence.
  

... Bacchetti combines inspiration with rigour, imagination with analytical accuracy, spirit of finesses with spirit of geometry … Not because of immodesty but because his eyes concentrates only on the score in front of him, Bacchetti doesn’t look at previous models and succeeds in finding an original and convincing key to read a “staccato” which makes clear the articulation of the different sound levels of the counterpoint, but that doesn’t renounce to ties dictated more by the logic of the talking than by an expressive intent; grace-notes often performed in different ways depending on the Suites and on single movements; a very balanced use, that is to say light hesitations, or accelerations very far from romantic technique; a coherent and personal choice of speed, which has as only landmark the unitary rendering of the whole suite without submitting to the taste for acrobatics that are an end in itself; the lightness of touch … a very successful performance, a recording of quality, airy and brilliant.
  

… A musical execution very attentive and meticulous … with rigorous painstaking effort the pianist finds and enhances the traits of each movement in every Suite … and also from the point of view of variety of timbre the transparency of Bacchetti’s touch, next to the flexibility of his keyboard “manualismo”, hits the target. The risk of technical and phonic uniformity during the listening of Bach’s “integrale”, that sometime was found with Leonhardt (Sony) and Rousset (Note), in our opinion here didn’t happen.
  

The young Italian pianist Andrea Bacchetti has garnered serious attention and high praise in the European press for his prowess with new music (he recorded Berio's complete piano works) as well as for his Bach interpretations. 
His warm sonority, singing line, and expressive intensity proudly hold their own in such world-class company. 
His eloquent melodic shaping of the Bourées (Suite One and Two) and the Fourth Suite's Menuets illustrate my point, and so does this pianist's uncommonly introspective approach to the Sixt Suite Prelude's interpretation. Repeats offer ample opportunity for Bacchetti to make subtle adjustments in voicing or to add imaginative yet never overwrought ornaments. Decca's sonics cpnvey formidable impact and bottom-up detail, giving the impression that the Fazioli grand's bass notes are bowed rather than hammered. Recommended.