On Svensson Plays Bach
by Rolf Haglund and published in Boras Tidning
February 3, 2003

The CD made me purr like a cat and almost explode with joy.
His Bach-playing is something of the boldest and most refreshing I’ve heard.

Many thought Glenn Gould had said the last word about playing Bach on modern pianos. But today I think I prefer the Goldberg variations on the harpsichord with Ton Koopman, and on the piano Angela Hewitt has made wonders in quest for more traditional playing.

Now Magnus Svensson joins my favourites with reference to a quite different sort of Bach, a Bach that on one hand is as austere as one can demand concerning the sound and flexibility but with an entirely new span of intensity and content, with a dark melancholic colour, that puts deep shadows also on faster dance movements, but above all cuts through all times with an universal humanism.

Of course one could label his playing as romantic – if the word hadn’t been so besmeared with idealism. I would rather call it gothic, in architectonic respect, or timeless, even more profoundly classical than all claims for a playing true to the period.

The choice of repertoire is exclusive, reflected through and dominated by three transcriptions by Busoni but with two rare and equally revolutionary original pieces. First the fantastic Toccata in D major which Svensson with all right includes among Bach’s most eccentric compositions, “large-scale, brilliantly rhapsodic, choleric” with a concert structure where peculiar fugues time after time leads into blind alleys. Then the French Suite in G that falls into a pianistic showpiece, a three-part fugal Gigue. From both these pieces he brings out a deep melancholic shadow-effect that becomes even deeper considering both works are composed in major.

These two pieces are congenially linked with the Busoni-transcriptions, this pioneer who dreamt of a new weightless , floating, immaterial music – which he found in Bach: “Its material is transparent, it is sounding air – it’s free.” ...........

Magnus Svensson masterly brings out this quality from the Choral preludes Nun komm’ der Heiden Heiland and Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, both in Busoni’s version, and wins triumphs in one of all piano virtuoso’s ordeal, same Busoni’s magical version of the Chaconne from the Partita for the solo violin.

The recordings at the Steinway Grand at Nybrokajen 11 are recorded with the utmost sonorous finesse by David G Christensen from Seattle, and hopefully the record stores will succeed in finding this and other cd:s from the little USA-situated company, and of course the concert arrangers soon as possibly presents Magnus Svensson “live”.