Bach The 7 Toccatas • Tristano
Having already covered Tristano’s earlier Bach releases—the Six Partitas and English Suites—this album feels like the next logical chapter in his piano-based traversal of Bach. Credit to Naïve Classics for keeping a cohesive visual identity across the series. One detail jumps out before pressing play: all seven toccatas in just 57 minutes.
When I did press play, first on my office system, the piano’s dryness struck me immediately—the timbre clear, but resonating warmth. The liner notes reveal Yamaha’s involvement, and I suspect a CFX in their own showroom studio in Tokyo. Switching to my main rig confirmed what I’d half-expected: Tristano’s hard, short, pedal-free playing gives the piano a tactile shimmer. That sharp articulation turns the studio into an instrument itself. It’s a delicious, dry, but warm, precise sound.
The notes also situate these toccatas as products of Bach’s early period—youthful, exploratory, and sometimes impulsive. His later works gained depth by revisiting ideas to exhaustion; here, the appeal lies in variety and invention. But these mercurial ideas can evaporate if the tempos run too hot. They sometimes do. In the D minor toccata (BWV 913), the Presto Thema flashes by with the nervous brilliance of a twenty-something composer showing off—music meant for fingers as much as mind.
Tristano channels that bravura through speed and exactitude. The comparison to a certain G.G. is unavoidable: both pianists obsessed with sound and touch, both allergic to sentimentality. Tristano isn’t copying Gould, but the lineage is audible—the pursuit of clarity as drama. In both ways, they get us to hear Bach’s music anew. And freshness doesn’t always last the test of time, but it’s attractive nevertheless.
At times that pursuit feels precarious. The final section of BWV 913 blazes thrillingly yet teeters on the edge of breathlessness; part of me wonders if the slight timing fluctuations are his or mine, leaning in too anxiously. That’s the risk of this super-clean, high-velocity approach: sustaining the illusion of control becomes its own athletic feat.
Perfection, of course, is a slippery word. The opening of the E-major toccata (BWV 914) never quite settles, though the fugue that follows vindicates his method—fleet, transparent, and joyously strict. In the G-minor (BWV 915), he storms through the free opening as if testing his fingers’ limits. But when the adagio arrives, I find myself longing for a breath—a hint of pedal, a slower pulse—so that the following Allegro could dazzle by contrast.
Contrast, really, is what I miss most. Bach’s music can take almost any treatment, but its power lies in light and shade, in the way calm precedes fury. Tristano’s uniform brilliance flattens some of that dynamic range. And yet, it’s hard to feel disappointed when the playing itself is so astonishingly clean. The G-minor Fuga and the F-sharp-minor closing fugue (BWV 910) are textbook examples of rhythmic discipline meeting elegance of tone.
Revisiting his toccata from the Sixth Partita (BWV 830) clarified the contrast: less rush, more breathing room, though this new album offers far superior recorded sound. In the C-minor (BWV 911), that opening rigidity becomes almost a cage of his own design. The ensuing adagio, with its sighing ascents, begs to linger a little longer.
I don’t crave a romanticized Bach—just a more human one, with space for hesitation. His approach to this music, his style of playing, works less successfully in the slower parts of the D major toccata (BWV 912), as an example. Still, there’s something admirable about Tristano’s conviction. He makes us hear these pieces anew, in his own hyper-articulated dialect. For much of this album, it works: the rhythmic drive, the unrelenting clarity, the sheer control of it all. His short, percussive touch achieves effects impossible on a harpsichord. That shortness in the D major concluding fugue is but one example, but yes, that’s where a piano permit us to go.
And while some will argue this music belongs on period instruments, I’m content to let Tristano’s Yamaha do the talking. The recital may be uncompromising, but it’s never dull.
