Partita No. 5 for Keyboard in G Major

Like the Goldberg Variations and Fifth French Suite, the ringing clarity of G Major seems to have suggested to Bach music of great joy, exhilaration and technical display. The opening “Preambulum”, full of virtuoso gestures and flourishes, is not at all the free-form, spontaneous prelude it first appears. The opening four bars come back regularly—like the returning theme (ritornello) of a concerto—lending structure and melodic charm to the whole movement. Two attractively tuneful dances follow: a busy “Allemande” with the honours shared equally between left and right hands, and a delightfully delicate, harmonically transparent “Corrente”. The next pair of movements artfully disguises the usual phraseology of their respective dances: a gentle, elegantly expressive “Sarabande” beginning with an unexpected upbeat, and a “Tempo di Minuetta” wittily combining both two, and the usual three, beats in a bar. The complex internal argument of the final “Gigue” (a double fugue) makes it the most finger-stretchingly ambitious of the set.