Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Partita n° 1 en si bémol majeur, BWV 825
Partita n° 2 en do mineur, BWV 826
Partita n° 3 en la mineur, BWV 827
Partita n° 4 en ré majeur, BWV 828
Partita n° 5 en sol majeur, BWV 829
Partita n° 6 en mi mineur, BWV 830

Wolfgang Rübsam, luth-clavecin

Wolfgang Rübsam, interprète de Bach expérimenté et de renommée internationale, a réussi à enregistrer toutes ses Partitas au luth-clavecin. Cela lui a été inspiré par un inventaire qui montre que Bach possédait au moins deux clavecins-luth. La suggestion s'est avérée particulièrement heureuse et reste une rareté parmi les publications d'aujourd'hui. En effet, certains mouvements de Partita écrits dans le style luth sont parfaitement adapté au luth-clavecin. Bach, qui attachait une grande importance à ces œuvres, souhaitait précisément écrire quelque chose de nouveau avec ces Partitas. Cet enregistrement Brilliant fait honneur à sa composition. Il possède un ton poétique et entre en parfaite résonnance avec le jeu sensible de Rübsam : d’une grande ingéniosité ornementale et improvisée, il produit une impression sonore et noble dans les registres graves et brillante dans les registres aigus. Notons aussi le tempérament choisi pour le luth-clavecin, avec un système d'accordage proche des tierces pures, qui participe grandement au style très agréable de ce disque. Les pièces pour clavier de Bach sont aussi difficiles que belles et semblent toujours nouvelles. En voici une belle démonstration. (Mathieu Niezgoda)

Playwright Luise Gottsched, née Kulmus, in 1732 wrote a letter to her future husband, the writer Johann Christoph Gottsched: ‘The keyboard pieces sent over by Bach… are as difficult as they are beautiful. Even after playing them ten times, they still seem new to me.’ A few years later polymath and Bach’s former pupil Lorenz Christoph Mizler offered the following advice regarding these Clavier-Übung I partitas: ‘Anyone who has difficulties with keyboard fingering will find it difficult to learn the keyboard pieces written by the famous Mr Bach in Leipzig’. The name Sinfonia for the first movement in the Partita in C minor is redolent of opening cantata movements and the dotted rhythm of a French overture. The Grave adagio however, is not followed by the fugal fast section you would expect here. This approach was carried out more consistently and stylistically in the Partita in D major, although there the fast section approaches the form of a concerto. Instead, the Grave adagio of the Partita in C minor is followed by a sonata-like movement with an arabesque effect in the upper voice, followed by a lively fugato. As a result, the piece appears in three parts. In contrast, the opening Fantasia in the Partita in A minor is more akin to an invention, showing similarities with the opening section of the second English Suite of the same key. Moreover, since the 17th century, the distinction between the terms ‘Praeludium’ and ‘Praeambulum’ was insignificant. Yet Bach’s delicately sculpted Praeludium in the B flat major Partita, is stylistically very different from the concerto-like Praeambulum of the Partita in G major. Lastly, the Toccata in the Partita in E minor offers rhapsodic-improvisatory sections framing a fugue after the style of Froberg, whose works for keyboard instruments must have been known to Bach. The original dance movement went through a functional transformation to become a character work of sorts; in this way, Bach made one of the first contributions to this later extremely popular style of keyboard music. Wolfgang Ru¨bsam, an experienced and internationally renowned Bach interpreter, contrived to record all the Partitas on the lute- harpsichord. This was inspired by an estate inventory of 1750, which shows Bach owned at least two lute-harpsichords. The suggestion proved to be especially fortunate and is still a rarity among today’s publications. For the Partita movements written in the ‘style luthe´’, such as the Allemande of the Partita in B flat major, the lute-harpsichord is perfect. The poetic tone of the creation from Keith Hill’s studio, sonorous and noble in the lower registers and brilliant in the higher registers, enters into an almost perfect synthesis with Ru¨bsam’s rhetorically sensitive playing, which is characterised by great ornamental and improvisational ingenuity. The selected temperament of Vallotti, with its tuning system approaching pure thirds, does the rest.