The Well Tempered Clavier

Following his acclaimed recording of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s complete solo keyboard works (RES10214), harpsichordist Steven Devine returns to Resonus to record one of the great pinnacles of the Baroque keyboard repertoire, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Das wohltemperierte Klavier (The Well-Tempered Clavier). For this first of two volumes, that explores the first book of this collection of forty-eight preludes and fugues, Devine uses an exquisite instrument built by Colin Booth after an instrument by the eighteenth century maker Johann Christof Fleischer.

J. S. Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier Daniel Barenboim "Das Wohltemperierte Klavier is not only the sum of everything that has preceded it, it also points the way ahead." Daniel Barenboim sees Bach's encyclopaedic collection of 48 preludes and fugues, with it's dual traversal of all 24 keys, as a work of pivotal importance and epic stature. His interpretation elicited a rapturous response from Gramophone magazine: "There is no sense of received wisdom, only a vital act of recreation that captures Bach's masterpiece in all it's first glory and magnitude; no simple-minded notions of period style or strict parameters but a moving sense of music of a timeless veracity."

Johann Sebastian Bach - Emerson Quartet - Fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier
arr. for strings by E. A. Forster & W. A. Mozart
EAC+LOG+CUE | APE: 250 MB | Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Deutsche Grammophon # 0289 477 7458 7 GH | Country/Year: Germany 2008
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

"Technically speaking the Emerson String Quartet are unimpeachable, with meticulous internal balance and intonation sustained at all times, remarkable tonal matching between the instruments and precision phrasing and dynamics…" ~International Record Review