Andras Schiff Plays All 6 Bach Partitas at Carnegie Hall Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times Andras Schiff The pianist played all six of Bach's partitas, long committed to memory, on Wednesday night at Carnegie Hall. In 1985, the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth, the Hungarian-born pianist Andras Schiff, then 31, gave three concerts at the Metropolitan Museum, prompting many to declare him the Bach pianist of his generation. The first two programs offered the six keyboard partitas and another work or two, and the third consisted of the "Goldberg" Variations. I don't remember many details of the performances, but I vividly recall an overall impression. In experiencing Mr. Schiff at the piano - spilling out all this Bach from memory; looking preternaturally confident and relaxed, to the extent of spreading his right leg in a sort of sprawl, and exuding a proprietary air; sounding utterly spontaneous in his little embellishments - you felt that you were observing old Bach himself, making things up on the spot. Mr. Schiff's subsequent career has fully borne out the promise of those concerts. He has mastered - virtually consumed - all of Bach's keyboard works and committed them to memory, available at a moment's notice. He has also performed them all in concentrated cycles and is just now finishing his second complete survey, a two-year itinerant Bach Project, which arrived at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday evening with, of all things, most of the same works he performed at the Met in 1985. Mr. Schiff has also become something of a marathon man. Along with a capacious memory (where also reside great swaths of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann, among others), he has amazing physical stamina and great generosity of spirit. So this time around, on Wednesday, it was all six partitas in a single evening, and Tuesday will bring not only the "Goldberg" Variations, but also the huge bonus of Beethoven's "Diabelli" Variations and undoubtedly an encore. That Mr. Schiff can perform, say, all the partitas in a single evening almost flawlessly and with brilliant characterization is astounding. Whether it is the ideal way to present these works to listeners, many of them far from fresh after a day's work, is another matter, and Mr. Schiff lost some of his audience at intermission, after four partitas. He has also changed in other ways over the years. Whereas he used to employ pedals sparingly in Bach, he now uses no pedals at all, playing with both feet flat on the floor and no sprawl. Yet Mr. Schiff achieves a remarkable variety of touch, from the smoothest legato to the spikiest isolated notes to kick off a fugue. Only rarely does a too-light touch combine with a fleetness of tempo to make things sound slightly facile. The partitas consist mostly of pieces derived from dance, and here is where Mr. Schiff truly shines. Enlivening rhythms are everywhere, and the variety of sonority and mood that he achieves over some 40 movements and three hours is remarkable. His concentration never flags, and you can almost sense the wheels turning in his imagination as to how he will ornament this repeat or how a slight jolt to the tempo might animate that phrase. Any encounter between Mr. Schiff and Bach can only inspire awe at a conjoining of spirits, and that extended to his little encore here, the Two-Part Invention No. 1 in C. Andras Schiff performs again on Tuesday at Carnegie Hall; carnegiehall.org.