Phisic Book

Piotr Anderszewski takes a characteristically creative approach to Bach’s Das Wohltemperierte Klavier (The Well-tempered Clavier). Rather than recording all 48 of its prelude-and-fugue pairings, he has focused on 12 pairings from Book Two. “I decided to put the pieces together in a sequence of my own subjective choosing, based sometimes on key relationships, at other times on contrasts. The idea behind this specific order is to create a sense of drama that suggests a cycle: 12 characters conversing with one another, mirroring each other.” Anderszewski’s last Erato album of Bach prompted BBC Music Magazine to write: “For anyone who loves Bach (or the piano) … this life-enhancing disc is required listening.

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…