Johann Sebastian Bach (31 March 1685 – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period.
[Wikipedia, [ Ссылка ]]

"Virtuoso, inventive and moving, but also capricious to the point of recklessness. This is how you could describe this work by Bach, which may be his earliest toccata for harpsichord. Although no autograph has survived, the work must have been composed shortly after Bach’s return from a journey to Lübeck. He had heard the famous Buxtehude playing there and was so impressed that he stayed longer than the couple of weeks’ leave his employer had given him. So on his return at the beginning of 1706, he got a severe reprimand from the church council in Arnstadt.

Bach had to face a whole tirade of complaints. The many curious variationes in his chorale preludes and strange notes he incorporated in them confused the congregation time and time again. And when he was accused of playing preludes that were too long, he responded defiantly by playing them far too short. All of which led to disgraceful hilarity among the choir pupils in the organ gallery.

When listening to this harpsichord toccata, however, one thing is crystal clear. These reprimands certainly did nothing to diminish Bach’s tendency to seek out the limits of his musical possibilities and those of his audiences. On the contrary, he gives free rein to his inspiration for over twelve minutes. An increasingly adventurous prelude gives rise to two ingenious fugues, which he interrupts with a languorous adagio. It must have been around this time that Bach started to realise that he needed to shake off more than just a compositional straitjacket if he wanted to develop further. A year later, he saw his opportunity and successfully applied for the post of organist at Blasiuskirche in Mühlhausen."
[Netherlands Bach Society, [ Ссылка ]]

Performer: Sviatoslav Richter (live)
Audio: [ Ссылка ]
Sheet Music: [ Ссылка ]

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