Clavier Übun

The Foul Tempered Clavier (2001) by Rascal Reporters is an album that combines various genres, including progressive rock, jazz, and a bit of avant-garde influence. This debut album from the British band features complex arrangements and intricate musicianship, with the album title playing on the idea of a "clavier" (a keyboard instrument, often the piano) and the temperamental nature of its music. The album is known for its dense, layered sound, offering a rich listening experience for fans of experimental music.

"Listening to Angela Hewitt's latest thoughts on Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier alongside her late-1990s Hyperion cycle, it appears that her interpretations haven't changed so much as evolved, intensfied and, most important, internalised …

For this release, pianist Dina Ugorskaja has recorded Book I and II of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier in Cooperation with Bayerische Rundfunk in Munich.

Bach is to the history of Western music as Dante and Shakespeare are to western literature. Outstanding musical figure, with endless creative and communicative powers, he expresses and summarizes all the musical experiences of the late Renaissance and the Baroque, taking them to unequalled heights. He had an unfailing taste in synthesizing the most diverse styles and in restoring the strength of seemingly outdated forms, and an impressive capacity of structuring the musical discourse. Bach works out a new way of thinking in music, that becomes a foundational element of the European musical thought in the two successive centuries.

Hailed by Hans von Bülow as the “Old Testament” of music history, the Well-Tempered Clavier has been the object of a substantial amount of publications and research over the past three centuries. A detailed analysis would surpass the limits of a CD booklet and could not do justice to the work’s complexity: readers will thus excuse me for limiting myself to a few personal remarks.