Bach Stimulates the Brain, Activates Fingers

Picture music history in the shape of the human body, and then we can argue about who is what. I would make Mozart the heart; the ever pushy Beethoven, the hands; Wagner, the mouth telling everyone what to think (or maybe the genitals); and John Cage would be the left foot placed far forward, ahead of everyone else and poised to trip the whole contraption. You may have other ideas. But would anyone deny that Bach is the brain?

A piece of literature found in the auditorium of the Neurosciences Institute at a Bach recital by pianist Gustavo Romero on Sunday afternoon explained that the human brain weighs only 3 pounds, “yet it is the most complex object in the known universe.” The four volumes of keyboard music, “Clavier-Ubung,” that Bach assembled between 1731 and 1741 probably weigh around 3 pounds, and they contain some of the most ingeniously complex, intellectually thrilling and deeply moving keyboard music ever written. To further ensure the braininess of the occasion, the globular interior of the institute’s acoustically superb auditorium suggests the shell of a cranium. Hearing Bach in this space, each note ringing with immediacy, feels almost like entering into his head, that place of ultimate musical wonder.

Romero’s recital was the first of a four-part series by the pianist commemorating the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death this month. If there is little in the concrete and frosted-glass institute (on a bluff overlooking the cerulean sea) to suggest Bach’s 18th century Leipzig, the festival is fitting in other ways. It is presented by the Athenaeum, a century-old music and arts library in La Jolla that owns a very rare 19th century edition of the first publication of Bach’s complete works. The Athenaeum also boasts having presented Romero’s first public performance in 1976, when he was 11. Last summer, it brought him back to play the complete piano music of Chopin.

Those concerts were well-regarded. Romero is a Chopin natural, a serious young pianist with singing tone and bravura technique. The same strong fingers, outgoing dynamism and lyric melodic touch can serve Bach as well. However, Bach presents different kinds of interpretative problems for a pianist.

The main music of Romero’s opening program was the first three Partitas (the second program will feature the final three; the third, the “Goldberg” Variations; the fourth, five keyboard concertos). Each Partita is a suite of dances introduced by a substantial movement, and all are dazzling displays of keyboard technique and contrapuntal inventiveness.

But the purpose of the Partitas was not public performance, because the harpsichord, for which they were written, isn’t an acoustically strong instrument. Rather, they served as personal entertainment for a home player, something like what a clever computer game might be for a modern “keyboard” virtuoso.

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The most successful attempts to make these Partitas play on a modern instrument in a modern concert hall have assumed one of two extremes: the dry one that expects the music’s intellectual inventiveness will speak for itself or the eccentric approach in which a Glenn Gould or Martha Argerich can use Bach as blueprint for his or her own striking personality.

Romero seemed to nervously hold a middle ground. He was faithful, to a degree, to Bach, and faithful, to a degree, to the piano as a big, ringing concert instrument. It is up to the individual player to decide what to bring out and how much (there are no dynamics, since the harpsichord had no control of volume). Romero took nearly all the repeats (the dances are mostly in two parts, with everything repeated), but didn’t always know what to do with them.

Occasionally an embellishment or two would be added to the repeat, or maybe a bass line brought out, but that was rare. And whatever pleasant surprises--a swelling inner line or a theatrical rush toward a climactic cadence--Romero came up with turned predictable the second go-round.

Still, there was much to admire. The slow sarabandes were beautifully shaped, and the grander opening movements, which are the most pianistic, had flair. But in the fast dances, particularly the sawing ones in six-eight time, Romero sometimes seemed on a perilous treadmill.

More comfortable were the Four Duetti, characterful two-part inventions that were played as sterling jewels; and more comfortable still was the “Italian Concerto” that concluded the program in an appropriately unfettered grand manner.

But where Romero, whose basic impulse is to be a Romantic-period player, seemed most comfortable was in his intensely soulful encore of Myra Hess’ genuinely pianistic arrangement of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” Rich enough to clog the arteries, this may not exactly have been Bachian brain food, but isn’t it also typical of the brain to have a mind of its own?

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* Gustavo Romero’s Bach survey continues Sunday and July 23, 4 p.m., and July 27, 7 p.m., Neurosciences Institute, 10640 John Jay Hopkins Drive, San Diego. $25 (858) 454-5872.