When they say putting your face on the line.... You will soon understand why... I propose two examples to you before starting to talk about one and the other, and I beg you to listen carefully to both before reading what I have written. I'll make a premise: I deliberately chose Sokolov's LIVE interpretation since a live performance certainly presents a series of greater difficulties compared to Bahrami's studio recording. First of all, one is subject to errors that are instead erased by re-recording in the studio; the studio sound is certainly more satisfying in terms of sonic sensation, so for an equal performance, if I were to record Rubinstein simultaneously with studio recording microphones and with a cell phone from a remote place in the middle of the audience, I would certainly prefer the recording with the studio microphones... In essence, if I were to play the two recordings of the same person from the same concert to someone and ask them: "who do you think plays better between these two pianists?", they would all close their eyes and answer the first one (the one recorded with studio microphones), when in reality it is the same pianist simply recorded with two different microphones.
Listen...
Sokolov (it's the whole partita, but for an A/B test I have taken you directly to minute 20:10 where the giga begins).
https://youtu.be/tsPvZ1gB4s0?t=20m10s
Ramin Bahrami
Let's make the necessary considerations to answer your question, and since no one takes the trouble to say things as they are, I will take it upon myself, even at the risk of seeming haughty... Why does everyone have a problem with Ramin Bahrami? Firstly, because I feel I can freely express the following concept, regardless of appearing eccentric... He has a level of piano technique that I HAD PERHAPS in my third year of piano, probably even in my second, which was when I was 10 years old!
I wonder if a "pianist" (rightfully placed in double quotes since calling such a performer a pianist is an insult to all REAL pianists who have spent years studying and perfecting their piano technique) whom the media wants to pass off as "the son of Bach" can go around giving concerts all over the world with scandalous piano technique; I am ashamed for him, I don't know how he even has the face to act like a great performer!! The embellishments are a mess; I invite you to look up other pieces that have embellishments (it's not difficult in Bach), in the small groups nothing can be understood, in the trills he doesn't achieve a closure that is done properly; for this reason alone, if it were up to me, I would send him back to a serious Maestro to study piano technique properly, certainly not to go around acting like a handsome guy posing as a virtuoso, let alone being given the title of "the greatest Bach expert". His technical mediocrity comes through very clearly even in this piece from the first partita, where notes that are not perfectly equidistant in time can be heard unequivocally and clearly even by those who are not musicians, often crushed; and this giga might seem difficult but it is actually very simple, there aren't even embellishments, except for some mordent (the simplest form of embellishment there is) which he executes in an imprecise and approximate manner... You're wrong about me here too!! I believe I played it much better after 3 days of reading it. Perhaps Paolo still has the CD recording that I gave him just as he started reading it. If he still possesses it, I would ask him to post it.
Moving on to the interpretative parts... I only hear a jumble of notes played with extremely rigid fingers, hard as wood; I can even hear the wood of the hammer hitting the string! The classic dry strikes... Here, even the basics of sound production on the piano are missing, things that should come even before piano technique.
If this is the result after repeated studio recordings, in which the best parts were extracted and edited together, I don't even want to imagine what his live recording of this partita could be like.
There isn't an element of tension in the entire piece. This giga is played from beginning to end with lead on the fingers. There are no moments of relaxation or tension in the musical phrase; it's all forte, as if you took a MIDI recording and set all the "note" events to a velocity of 110.
Sokolov brought a very beautiful interpretation, perfectly capturing the character of this giga. Allowing himself breaths, creating tensions, with excellent piano technique, in a live recording, captured by a spectator with a microphone found inside an Easter egg.
I don't think I have anything else to add to my post, which I would consider extremely realistic...
PS. I found the recording... This is the recording of the match after 3 days of reading (attention: not the gigabyte, the whole match!), any inaccuracies are due to the fact that I was still reading the notes obviously and playing and recording live on a 500 euro digital keyboard, certainly not on a Steinway grand piano in a recording studio where I could fix whatever I wanted. The point is that I do engineering for a living when I would have wanted to be a pianist, Bahrami is a pianist, at this point perhaps because he isn't also an engineer...
http://www.simonerenzi.com/condivisa/partita.mp3
