Bach: Well-Tempered Clavier Live at Elbphilharmonie

Recorded in Hamburg’s soaring waterside landmark, the Elbphilharmonie, this visual album captures Piotr Anderszewski’s characteristically creative and personal approach to Bach’s Das Wohltemperierte Klavier (The Well-tempered Clavier). It is the culmination of the Polish-born pianist’s 20 years of reflection on this magnum opus of the keyboard repertoire.

Anderszewski focuses on just 12 pairings of prelude and fugue from the total of 48 available to him; all his choices come from the more introspective Book Two of the collection. “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.” 

His audio recording of the same pieces, released in early 2021, received a Gramophone Award in October. Observing that “the album has a cast-list of characters worthy of any comedy, human or divine,” the magazine summed it up as “an artefact of enchantment and instruction” and assigned Anderszewski a place in the “pantheon of Bach pianists”.

Accepting his Gramophone Award, Anderszewski said: “The scope for exploration of these pieces seems limitless. On the one hand, they demand the utmost rigour and precision. On the other, they have the potential to set the interpreter free like no other music I know.”