The preludes and fugues that make up Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier” operate on multiple levels at once — they’re a compilation of techniques for keyboard writing, a polemic on the subject of tuning ...

Not only across the whole span of the 24 keys, from C major to B minor, but even within the four or five minutes of a single prelude-fugue couple, Bach can take you from the solemn polyphony of a ...

The famous conductor Hans von Bülow, slightly less famous as a pianist now and nearly forgotten as a composer, remains most present to modern music lovers either as the jilted husband of Cosima von ...

Keith Jarrett and Johann Sebastian Bach go back a long way. Between 1722 and 1742, Bach composed two sets of preludes and fugues in all twenty-four major and minor keys, written for keyboard; the ...

While listening to András Schiff’s new recording of J.S. Bach’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier” on headphones as I stared up into the crown of a maple tree, it suddenly struck me that listening to Bach is ...

When he was a boy, Andras Schiff labored over the tedious, repetitive finger studies that are universally loathed by aspiring pianists. He thought they were like spinach: yucky, but good for you if ...

When Johann Sebastian Bach compiled the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier in 1722, he wrote that the 24 preludes and fugues were "for the profit and use of musical youth desirous of learning, ...

Christophe Rousset, a remarkable harpsichordist and conductor who occupies a place of high honor among Baroque-music interpreters, scores a triumph with this magisterial reading of one of the ...

Prelude & Fugues: XIII F-sharp major; XIII F-sharp major; XIV f-sharp minor; XV G major; XIV f-sharp minor; XV G major; XVI g minor; XVII A-flat major; XVI g minor; XVII A-flat major; XVIII g-sharp; ...