CD Reviews

TimeOut Chicago | Marc Geelhoed | 3 January 2008

Album Review
David Theodor Schmidt
Bach Reflections: Bach, Shostakovich, Liszt (Profil)

Twenty-five-year-old German pianist David Theodor Schmidt makes a smart debut with this disc, tying together later composers with their Bach-derived inspirations. The care with which he chose Shostakovich’s final Prelude and Fugue from the Russian’s monumental collection of 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87, and Liszt’s Variations on a Motif by Bach suggests a thoughtful brain operating those fingers. He’s willing to take liberties with Bach, at times heading overtly in the grand style that’s pretty outdated at this point, a trait that sets him further apart from his overly cautious peers.
The disc opens with Bach’s Sixth Partita, characterized by precisely delineated rhythms and a singing quality in the highest voice that you don’t hear every day. He also pays admirable attention to the bass, making this collection of stylized Baroque dance forms appealing as more than just ersatz dances.

A single Prelude and Fugue, No. 22 in B flat minor, from Book II of the Well-Tempered Clavier serves as a bridge to the Shostakovich and Liszt, and he plays it sternly and strictly. Shostakovich’s own D minor Prelude and Fugue – the darkest and most fully realized of the entire collection – still registers as a shock, with Schmidt’s deeply tolling bass octaves ringing out and the fugue’s simple theme remaining clear no matter which voice it’s in. Everyone from Shostakovich himself to Keith Jarrett has recorded this, and Schmidt adds another interesting interpretation.

Liszt’s 17-minute work shows off Schmidt’s ability to hold a big piece together, and he handles that task well. But it’s the smaller-scale pieces that make him worth hearing.

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