Search - Handel, Jarrett :: Suites for Keyboard

Lovely lessons for keyboard

James H. Timber-Giboyeaux | Puerto Rico | 07/17/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Jarrett surrender to music making reached new dimensions. Here the cheerful lessons by Georg Friedrich receive a most deserved rendition of graceful execution and control. Keith search for authenticity of the musical scores must be praised. The cd has great sound, as expected from an ECM. Quite and enjoyable performance."

Stunningly beautiful!

James H. Timber-Giboyeaux | 08/20/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is one of the finest classical recordings I have listened to in years -- Jarrett plays with warmth and sympathy, never flashy, and brings these keyboard suites to life."

Jarrett Reigns in Baroque Music Every Bit as Supremely as in

Gerald Parker | Rouyn-Noranda, QC., Dominion of Canada | 09/03/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"There is no need to belabour the excellences of Keith Jarrett's performances of Handel's keyboard suites. The playing has the lyrical flow that other Amazon.com and Amazon.ca reviewers almost unanimously praise so lavishly and so rightly; even when Jarrett choses at times to play somewhat détaché, he never pokes, bangs, or thumps, as so many other keyboard players tend (whether on the piano or the harpsichord) to do. The phrasing of the music is so beautifully delineated that one simply would have to look long and far, indeed, to find the equal of such 'keyboardmanship' (in Bach's or in Handel's music)! Will Jarrett eventually grace his many admirers also with performances on organ (of music from whatever period that he may care to choose) or even on clavichord? This listener would be eager for such expansions of Jarrett's vast horizons as a keyboard musician of the highest order!



The way that Jarrett plays the suites in E minor and in A major alone would be worth the price of this disc, but the entire CD is a delight from beginning to end. However, in the other suites, there occasionally is all of that gentle reflectiveness that characterises his playing, in his own improvisational music and in classical repertoire alike, at the expense of the spritelier movements' humour and dash, the tempi at times just a tad too slow to maximise the brio of such sections, but all is forgiven for the sheer musicality and utter lack of pedantry of what one has to endure elsewhere in the performances of "early music specilists" or of some aggressive thwackers of Baroque keyboard music (especially in the music of Handel's contemporary, J.S. Bach) such as Weissenberg and (too much of the time) Gould.



The fugues in these suites simply surpass what praise can heap upon them. The fugue in the suite in E minor would be one of my prime choices to students of keyboard playing of how to execute a fugue or other work in strict counterpoint, with clarity and stylishness but also with a lyrical impetus that one seldom finds (usually, as others play, the impetus being at the expense of lyricism, or the lyricism at the expense of rhythmic articulation and forward motion) in players who fall short of Jarrett's combination of sensibility, elegance, taste, and sheer technical aplomb.



Well, one need not go further; read the other laudatory reviews and rest assured that the praise of the listeners who wrote them is utterly justified. Do not let any snide and crabbed musicologist or envious keyboard-tweaking "specialist" lure you with the inevitable and unjustifiedly negative comments of such unmusical riff-raff into underestimating the beauty, elegant style combined with expressivity, and the virtuosity that Keith Jarrett brings totally and so surpassingly well to the service of what the music as Handel conceived it was meant to convey and as Jarrett does so in these recorded performances of Handel's suites.

"