The only solo recital in this year's Lufthansa Baroque festival reinforced its Grand Tour theme, bringing in an Italian harpsichordist to explore the Italian influence that reached into JS Bach's keyboard music, whether directly or through other northern-European composers. It was a nice idea, but it translated into a rather dry evening.
The four Bach pieces that Rinaldo Alessandrini chose were either early works or transcriptions, and nothing on the programme would have given much opportunity for showmanship, even if he had been in showy mode. As it was, he played thoughtfully but with little of the flair and momentum that can characterise his conducting.
He started with Sweelinck's Ballo del Granduca, a courtly set of variations that paved the way for Bach's Aria Variata, its format suggesting quiet pre-echoes of the Goldberg Variations. Alessandrini's chords unfurled smoothly up the keyboard, the fastest passages tripping along; but in the swathes of running quavers he tugged at the rhythm in a way that may have been stylistically apt but which also ensured these passages never really flowed.
Two transcriptions, of a D minor oboe concerto by Marcello and a D major Vivaldi violin concerto, brought genuine Italian music filtered through Bach's ears, and perhaps Alessandrini's most persuasive playing. Both slow movements had accompaniments of slow, repeated chords that sounded unavoidably leaden played by harpsichord rather than a string orchestra, but he shaped the melodies above them delicately.
Bach's solemn Fugue on a Theme by Albinoni was at its most resonant when it thinned out to two lines higher up the keyboard. The thicker textures of Buxtehude's almost rhapsodic Prelude in G minor brought a little exploration of the instrument's sonic potential, and Alessandrini caught the throwaway ending nicely. And Böhm's D major Capriccio, with its nursery-rhyme-like theme, sounded warm and genial. Yet if this programme made us appreciate the genius of Bach's mature originality, that was by its absence more than anything.
· The Lufthansa Baroque festival continues until May 28. Box office: 020-7222 1061.
