Review: Paley Festival

Sept. 21, First English Lutheran Church

Most accomplished pianists come to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach early in life, and Bach stays with them for life. Many of them avoid playing Bach in public, or wait until middle age before they go public; and in maturity they often filter Bach through the pacing, phrasing and expressive language of other music that they play especially well.

Case in point: In the opening program of this year’s 15th season of his Richmond music festival, Alexander Paley seemed to call up the spirit of Chopin and leave it hovering over his performance of the sarabande of Bach’s Partita No. 1 in B flat major, BWV 825. His tempo was very slow, his touch and phrasing wistfully romantic. The music took this treatment agreeably, even as a sarabande became a reverie.

Paley’s readings of this and the Second Partita in C minor, BWV 826, were liberally garnished with these post-Bachian touches, usually with happy results. At no point did he try to make the piano impersonate a harpsichord. The bright tone and clarity of his instrument, a Blüthner from Leipzig, and the marked contrasts in dynamics that Paley produced, kept these dance suites from sounding pianistically overwrought.

With his wife, Pei-wen Chen, Paley played Max Reger’s four-hands transcriptions of Bach’s “Brandenburg” concertos Nos. 3 and 6. One surprise was that these pieces translate so well to the piano – testimony to both the durability of the music and the ingenuity of the transcriber. Another surprise was that the darker-hued Sixth (whose orchestration omits violins) came off more convincingly than the more cheerful and rhythmically insistent Third, which in this reading sounded too heavy and overly metrical.

The two pianists and the Blüthner seemed to adjust to the church sanctuary’s acoustic as the program progressed – piano sound noticeably improved in the second half – and the Second Partita and “Brandenburg” No. 6 were more satisfying performances.

The second and third concerts of the festival were to include cellist Dana McComb, but she has had to withdraw because of a hand injury. So, scheduled performances of trios by Mozart and Beethoven will be replaced by a couple of Mozart’s violin sonatas (played by Kathy Judd) and works for clarinet and piano (with Charles West). For details, see the September calendar, below.

The Alexander Paley Music Festival continues with performances at 8 p.m. Sept. 22 and 3:30 p.m. Sept. 23 at First English Lutheran Church, Stuart Circle (Monument Avenue at Lombardy Street) in Richmond. Donations requested. Details: (804) 355-9185; www.paleyfestival.info