The English, the English, the English are best

Bach: English Suites

The English, the English, the English are best,

I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest.

- Michael Flanders & Donald Swann *

It's not clear how Bach's six wonderful collections of dances came to be called the "English Suites". In his liner note essay, Michael Struck-Schloen notes that Bach's son Johann Christian (the "English Bach") wrote "Fait pour les Anglois" ("made for the English") on the score, and that another son, Carl Philip Emmanuel, said that "the composer wrote them for an English nobleman", though that particular nobleman hasn't come forward. Johann Sebastian may as well have written these suites for me, anglophile Bach-lover that I am. I've always loved this music, most especially as played by Glenn Gould in his 1977 recording.

While Jonathan Ferrucci's new two-disc album, recorded on February 2–6, 2026 in the Schafstall, Marienmünster, isn't likely to replace Glenn's version in my view, I still awfully enjoyed (as the English say) his performance here. I was especially intrigued by Ferrucci's thesis that the English Suites represent two opposing sides of Bach's world-view:

The dances are by nature related to rhythm and to your body, so it’s a profane form. On the other side there is this sacred element, this very spiritual pilgrimage of the music. It was my intention to find some way where these two meet.

It's instructive to compare the two versions of the final movement of the set, the Gigue from Suite no. 6. Gould takes the piece much slower than Ferrucci, though as is usually the case, he doesn't play the repeat. His non-legato playing at first sets up the music in front of us as a kind of musical still life, but as the piece ventures into a more contrapuntal style, the pianist builds to an anxious, almost hypnotic state before a miraculous turn into a final state of grace. All in less than three minutes!

Ferrucci's version is much faster, taking three and a half minutes with a repeat. In an almost Romantic take on this music, he piles up Bach's restless, agitated music through the fugal process, ending not in Gould's serene state, but rather in a kind of resignation. "This Gigue is really like the end of the world," Ferrucci has said, "It feels like some kind of apocalyptic warning to humankind."

These suites are full of this kind of arresting insights; I expect I'll uncover more and more as I re-listen to this set (which I certainly plan to do). Very highly recommended.

The cover shows Paul Klee's painting Figure in Yellow, from 1937.

* "A Song of Patriotic Prejudice":