Bach: Keyboard Partita No.6 in E Minor, BWV 830 (Anderszewski, Levit)

Bach’s last and greatest keyboard partita. It seems a little strange to place this beside the other partitas, since it is clearly aiming for something a lot more serious and concentratedly expressive than its five siblings. The opening of the Toccata (the longest single work in all the partitas) announces a seriousness of intent that you just don’t find in any of the other partitas, and is itself mirrored in two places in this suite – in the Toccata’s fugue, whose theme is built from the descending appoggiatura heard right after the first chord, and in the Sarabande. The Gigue which closes this suite is not only unorthodox (and controversial) but also a lot more motoric and obsessive than any of the other gigues in the other partitas. The Sarabande between these two movements is a dizzying and profoundly moving work – it’s awash with great tides of notes, but the density of the ornamentation does not stop it being the most moving thing Bach wrote in the partitas – it seems breathlessly rapt, lost in itself. T