Trevor Pinnock's late life focus on the harpsichord is something to celebrate, and he has issued some wonderful Bach recordings. His traversal of Book 1 of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 846-869, was recorded in 2018 and 2019 and issued in 2020. It generated strong anticipation for Book 2, which landed on classical best-seller lists after its release in 2022. Even given that there are plenty of available recordings of these classics, Pinnock's readings are standouts. The focus of his approach in the systematic Well ...
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Trevor Pinnock's late life focus on the harpsichord is something to celebrate, and he has issued some wonderful Bach recordings. His traversal of Book 1 of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 846-869, was recorded in 2018 and 2019 and issued in 2020. It generated strong anticipation for Book 2, which landed on classical best-seller lists after its release in 2022. Even given that there are plenty of available recordings of these classics, Pinnock's readings are standouts. The focus of his approach in the systematic Well-Tempered Clavier is variety. He treats each prelude and fugue as an individual work, delightfully varying the emphasis between prelude and fugue and exploring the subtleties of the relationship between the two in a way that few pianists have managed. Better still, Pinnock does all this while keeping to a pretty strict Baroque rhythmic framework. He does alter the tempo slightly in many of the preludes, but these are in no way quasi-Romantic readings, and he applies just enough tension to...
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