Why Murray Perahia turned to Bach

Pianist Murray Perahia tells Geoffrey Norris why he developed an obsession with Bach after illness struck

It is an unthinkable dilemma for any pianist.

What do you do when fate delivers a nasty blow and there is the grim prospect of never being able to play again? This is the situation that Murray Perahia had to face in the Nineties, when an inexplicable and agonising swelling in his right thumb compelled him to put on hold an illustrious career that had been blossoming ever since he won the Leeds Piano Competition in 1972.

For several years, when he was still in his forties, he had to abandon the concert platform, but he did not abandon music. He turned to Bach, studying the scores away from the keyboard, analysing and learning. When he was finally able to resume playing in public, Bach's music had become a key component of his repertoire. "I found I was obsessed with it", he says.

The thumb ailment has returned from time to time, necessitating treatment and concert cancellations. Indeed, he had to pull out of the opening European leg of his world tour, which was due to start in January.

Despite, or perhaps because of, these problems, Perahia has come to be recognised as one of the foremost interpreters of Bach's music, not least through recordings that attest to the depth and joy of expression and the lucidity of thought that his period of enforced study leave gave him. The latest disc, of the solo Partitas Nos 2, 3 and 4, is being released next month by Sony.

Perahia was by no means a Bach novice before he developed his fascination.

"I did play Bach as a student," he says, "but not very seriously. In a way, it's a lifelong challenge for me to play Bach on the piano, because, when I was growing up, the wisdom was - and it came from many great pianists, including Clifford Curzon and Claudio Arrau - that the piano wasn't the right vehicle for Bach. I felt that this had to be wrong, because, first of all, Bach is very important for any pianist, simply from the point of knowing about counterpoint, structure and harmony."

Bach, as Perahia realises, had an impact on music not just in the 18th century, but throughout the Romantic era of the 19th and beyond. "Composers took Bach as their bedrock," he says, "whether it's Beethoven, Mozart, Schumann or Chopin.

"I don't think there was a day when Chopin wasn't playing Bach. When Schumann went into depression, he wrote fugues, and he always told his wife, Clara, to study Bach. It was an important part of their musical make-up."

Perahia's teenage studies at Mannes College of Music in New York gave him a firm foundation for the way he approached Bach, forging a link with the great Austrian theorist Heinrich Schenker, who died in 1935.

"All his former students were teaching there, having escaped the Nazis," Perahia says, "and I'm very much influenced by his thinking. When I was away from the concert platform, I was reading his books, and I felt that I was in touch with something deeper about what music is about. What fascinates me is the structure underneath a piece."

This is structure not in a dry sense, as Perahia explains, but in the understanding of the way harmony, counterpoint and the simple action of one note leading to another contribute to the larger picture.

His need to get to the fundamentals of Bach even led him to play the harpsichord for two years, "learning about articulation, pacing, rhythmic subtleties and other things a harpsichordist has to know".

But Perahia is adamant that the music can be transmitted on an instrument of our day. "I think the pursuit of authenticity is fine," he says. "There's nothing against it, but it's not the only way."

So how do you do it? "It took me many years to find my voice in Bach," he admits. It is crucial "not to imitate a harpsichord, to play freely and yet not romantically, because that's not part of the spirit of the music. If tonal colouring can enlighten the music, it should be used so that the listener gets what's underneath the notes when he's listening to a piece. You can use a certain amount of pedalling - not overdone - because that's part of the piano.

"And the sense of direction is important even in Bach. It has to be demonstrated, it has to be lived. This is an emotional as well as a pianistic thing. Emotions and intellect should work together. You have to live Bach as if it were a narrative. Music of the classical period, say, is much more dramatic, the events are much more contrasting. Bach is more like a meditation."

As Perahia says, his quest is for the "essence of a composition. How does it sustain so many minutes - even an hour - where you feel that each note is inevitable but at the same time a surprise? That's what fascinates me about music."