Bach, J S: Prelude & Fughetta in F major, BWV901

As harpsichordist, conductor, and musical director of the ensemble Les Talens Lyriques, Christophe Rousset is one of the finest interpreters of Baroque music. His first recording for Aparté, devoted to Louis Couperin, was received most enthusiastically by public and critics alike, and collected many distinctions in the international press including BBC Music Magazine Instrumental Choice.

Now at the peak of his maturity, the artist presents an original programme, Bach Fantasy, in which he treats us to little-known works but also standards by the great J.S. Bach. Apart from the important sets of works, including the Goldberg Variations, the Well-Tempered Clavier, the keyboard Suites and Partitas, many miscellaneous pieces by Bach have come down to us in the hand of his pupils and admirers: early essays, pieces of a didactic nature, evocations of emotions, and sometimes all of the above. Christophe Rousset plays these pieces on the 1632 Ruckers harpsichord of Neuchâtel, one of the finest in the world.

Hardly a child has learned piano for the last two hundred years without in the course of her training encountering and profiting from keyboard music which Johann Sebastian Bach composed specifically for the purpose of developing the minds and hands of young keyboardists.

The last ten years of his life saw Bach developing a private preoccupation with the technical and musical possibilities surrounding strict fugal and canonic polyphony. The publication of the Goldberg Variations (BWV 988, 1742), with nine strict canons (to which an appendix of an additional fourteen has been recently discovered), the Musical Offering (BWV 1079, 1747), containing alongside two excellent ricercari, nine cerebrally devised canons in varying forms, and the canonic variations on Vom Himmel hoch (BWV 769, see Volume XI in this series), clearly reflect Bach’s increasing obsession with this type of composition. It comes as no surprise, therefore, to find that during the same period, Bach began another series of canons and fugues under the title The Art of Fugue

In 1994, pianist Ivo Janssen started a very ambitious project: performing and recording the complete keyboard works by J S Bach. In February 1998 the first CD in this series was released, on his own label VOID, which was especially started for this purpose.

This set is the only complete keyboard set containing previously cut passages and includes 191 BWV numbers and over 23 hours of music. “Janssen has admirable skills for the task: a pianist’s sensibility, an unflagging imagination and compelling musicianship.” American Record Guide.