The Well Tempered Clavier

Some twenty years after the collection known as Das wohltemperierte Klavier J.S. Bach assembled his second collection of twenty-four preludes and fugues in all keys, completing one of the greatest achievements in keyboard music that today remains one of the crowning glories of the genre.

Described as the ‘Pianists’ Old Testament’, The Well-Tempered Clavier is a collection of pieces of exceptional artistic quality. No other work from the baroque period has been as valued, performed and studied as this collection whose objectives were musical, theoretical and didactic. Both books of The Well-Tempered Clavier feature a prelude and fugue in each of the 12 semitones of the chromatic scale, covering each of the 24 major and minor modes – a unique body of works. No two preludes or fugues are alike; they display the full range of contrapuntal devices, while the preludes offer an infinite variety of melodic, rhythmic and constructional possibilities. Each of these pieces demonstrates a mastery of counterpoint that never takes precedence over emotion, beauty and aesthetics. With the two books of The Well-Tempered Clavier, Bach established himself as the unrivalled master of the fugue genre. Following his recordings of Bach’s concertos for one and two harpsichords (BIS-2041, BIS 2051 and BIS-2481), which reviewers have praised for his unaffected playing and acute musicianship, Masato Suzuki now offers us his take on this Bach monument.

“These are performances in which tempos, phrasing, articulation and the execution of ornaments are convincing,” wrote Gramophone of Jarrett’s first recorded account of The Well-Tempered Clavier. “Both instrument and performer serve as unobtrusive media through which the music emerges without enhancement.” In this live recording from Troy, New York, made in March 1987, just one month after his studio recording of the work, Keith Jarrett addresses the challenges of Bach’s great set of preludes and fugues once more. Part of the goal is transparency, to bring the listener closer to the composer. As Jarrett explained at the time: “The very direction of the lines, the moving lines of notes, are inherently expressive…When I play Bach, I hear almost the process of thought. Any colouration has nothing to do with this process.“

Aaron Pilsan is only twenty-five years old, but he already has a busy career to his credit, with a solo album devoted to Beethovenand Schubert - very well received by the critics - and another of duo repertory with the cellist Kian Soltani. A student of Lars Vogt, he has also received guidance from András Schiff - Bach has always been at the centre of their work together. The young Austrian pianist has been fascinated since childhood by The Well-Tempered Clavier, ‘that musical journey on which Bach embarks with us in Book One: from the seemingly simple and joyful triad of the famous Prelude in C major to the final fugue, of a complexity almost worthy of Schoenberg, on a subject that already includes the twelve semitones of the chromatic scale…

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.

The Iranian pianist, Ramin Bahrami, studied with Piero Rattalino at the conservatory “G. Verdi” in Milan, at the Accademia Pianistica “Incontri col Maestro” in Imola and with Wolfgang Bloser at the Hochschule für Musik in Stuttgart. He participated in master-courses with Alexis Weissenberg, András Schiff, Robert Levin and, in particular, with Rosalyn Tureck, the artist who, more than any other in the 20th century, popularized Bach’s works through her research and performances.