Pianist
Beatrice Rana has recorded music ranging forward into the 20th century, but she made her first big impact with
Bach's Goldberg Variations, BWV, 988. She rejoins the
Bach bandwagon with this 2025 release, which made classical best-seller lists in the spring of that year.
Rana is a marvelous
Bach pianist, and this recording of four
Bach concertos is as excellent as anything on her youthful
Goldberg release. Here, she conducts the
Amsterdam Sinfonietta from the keyboard, and the coordination between pianist and ensemble is something to hear. Everyone is playing modern instruments, but there are influences from the historical performance movement. The phrasing in the orchestra is precise, crisp, and clipped, and
Rana's playing is bright and effervescent but controlled, without a lot of obvious pianism. Yet, within a fixed framework,
Rana is ebullient and joyous, even with two of the four works in minor mode. In the faster movements, she can vary phrasing just enough to give the impression of slight changes in tempo where, in fact, there are none, and the slow movements are sheer grace. This is a
Bach concerto performance to stand with the great ones, dating back to
Glenn Gould's rare episode of collaboration with
Leonard Bernstein. ~ James Manheim
