Bach published his keyboard music with a clear didactic objective. If his students could master the increasingly complex works, they would slowly but surely attain the perfect autonomy – or autonomous perfection – of the ideal musician. The 'Wohltemperirte Clavier' formed the pinnacle of this logic. However, that didn’t mean that all the preludes and fugues were equally highbrow. Take, for instance, the 15th pair of works from the WTC II, in the comfortable key of G major, which put on a great show of virtuosity, but are actually quite manageable with regard to technique.

Twenty years after his first collection of music in every key imaginable, Bach completed a second 'Wohltemperirte Clavier'. We recorded his first book of Preludes and Fugues at the homes of 24 different musicians. For this second part, performed in its entirety by Christine Schornsheim, we chose 12 very different locations in Utrecht, to celebrate the 900th anniversary of our home city.

Recorded for the project All of Bach on 14 February 2022 at the Railway Museum, Utrecht, the Netherlands. If you want to help us complete All of Bach, please subscribe to our channel [ Ссылка ] and consider donating [ Ссылка ].

For the interview with Christine Schornsheim on the Wohltemperirte Clavier II and the process of recording this in its entirety, see [ Ссылка ]
For more information on BWV 884 and this production go to [ Ссылка ]

All of Bach is a project of the Netherlands Bach Society, offering high-quality film recordings of the works by Johann Sebastian Bach, performed by the Netherlands Bach Society and its guest musicians. Visit our free online treasury for more videos and background material on [ Ссылка ]. For concert dates and tickets go to [ Ссылка ].

Christine Schornsheim, harpsichordist
Harpsichord: Bruce Kennedy, 1989 after Michael Mietke

0:00 Prelude
2:55 Fugue

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