String players wielding baroque bows don’t often share the stage with a pianist playing a modern Steinway grand, but that was the setup for this immersion in JS Bach’s keyboard concertos – six of them, performed by the pianist Alexandros Kapelis and the Berliner Barock Solisten.
Formed of players moonlighting from the Berlin Philharmonic, the Solisten play on modern instruments but in historically informed style – hence those bows. As for Kapelis, he combined the ornate decoration you would expect from a harpsichord – agile, swerving scales; filigree trills and ornaments that pinged off the starting note – with techniques available only on the modern piano, making subtle but frequent use of the sustaining pedal and, in a couple of ravishing quiet slow-movement passages, bringing the mute pedal into play. The effect was like the costumes in Bridgerton: authentic silhouette; bright, modern palette.
For ears used to the either-or of grand-piano Bach or period-instrument Bach, the sound was different, more densely woven. With the piano lid completely removed, there was nothing to bounce the instrument’s sound towards the audience – and, in the Barbican Hall’s bright acoustic, the Solisten tended to feel very present, rarely softening their edge enough to step completely into the background. Yet Kapelis’s crisp articulation cut through just enough, keeping the focus where it needed to be – and in any case, for all that Kapelis took bows and walked on and off like a soloist, the music felt less like a succession of concertos and more like chamber music. The long unison passages that are a feature of the D minor concerto, BWV 1052, were felt and phrased as one by all 13 players. At times like these it was gratifyingly hard to say which of the musicians was leading.
The Largo from the F minor concerto, BWV 1056, is the best-known movement of all these concertos and can sound hackneyed; Kapelis, though, made it feel playful, his left hand bouncing on to the bass notes at the end of each phrase. This was played as a literal encore at the end, and sounded different yet again.
