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Fanfare

This CD is titled Tranquillity, and the title should give you a good idea of what to expect from the program. The pianist writes, “Bach’s music has radiance, luminosity, divinity, serenity, and timeless beauty. There is tenderness and sometimes melancholy, but it is always suffused with optimism, and as Bach indicates at the end of many if not all of his scores, his music is always written in the service of God.” Amen, I suppose.

Phillips’s biography paints him as perhaps a reluctant virtuoso—a pianist who has enjoyed considerable success but who has shunned the limelight. On his website, the only other album listed is a Chopin disc (the four ballades plus a selection of nocturnes) and that hasn’t been released yet, although it should be by the time you read this.

I suspect that his Chopin disc will be more successful, at least for me, than the one I am reviewing here. Tranquillity is hardly a failure, but not everyone will want to hear 76 minutes of slow music by Bach (first a movement of this, then a section of that, etc.) played in a manner more consistent with the 19th century and the Steinway than with the 18th century and a harpsichord. There is no denying that beautiful music is played and recorded beautifully on this CD, but Bach is not what sometimes is called “classical chill” and his music is not Romantic. You can’t fully appreciate Bach’s contemplative music without putting it in context, or at least juxtaposing it against his less inward, less contemplative music. It is said that less is more, but the opposite is also true.

Still, this is gorgeous, sensitive playing, as long as you are willing to accept Bach’s music being treated and played this way. Still more impressive is Phillips’s statement that this recording was assembled from two “performances” (not live, apparently, but simulating live conditions) in a church in Oxford, “and that was pretty much that.” In other words, this recording was not put together in a studio from numerous takes and retakes, and I respect that integrity very much.

Several of these works are played in arrangements by Busoni, Siloti, or August Stradl. Phillips acknowledges this in his booklet note, but we are not given specifics. Piano mavens should be able to figure it out on their own … but they should not have to. Let’s give credit where credit is due. This is the second CD that I have reviewed in this issue which has taken a casual approach to attributions. Maybe it seems musty or old-fashioned to mention this. This lack of detail, too, smacks of “classical chill.”

Enough complaining. Phillips can play Bach’s music for me whenever he likes, but not necessarily for as long as he likes.