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Libby Burgess plays Bach Preludes and Fugues at Chy Cara 10th March 2023







 Libby Burgess, a former organ scholar at Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford, performed the complete Bach Preludes and Fugues over three days in Cornwall from Friday 3rd March to Sunday 5th March.  She began in the Main Hall at Chycara a wedding venue and holiday park near Carnon Downs, in at atmospheric cabaret type venue with a small but very attentive local audience.

Libby did not choose to perform the Preludes & Fugues in their sequence in the two pubished volumes but she mixed and matched between the two separate books with some interesting and surprising contrasts between the normally sequential key performances .  It was the first time she had played in this sequence which (she confessed afterwards) gave her a few surprises (but no missed accidentals that I noticed).  

Bach on the piano (as opposed to the harpsichord or the clavichord) had as its most popular and some say idiosyncratic 20th century interpreter the American Glenn Gould,  Libby is a far more lyrical and expressive interpreter.  

Even the name of the collection "The Well-Tempered Klavier" shows that J.S. Bach himself was striving for something at the edge of the new baroque developments in instrument design sophistication.  


Prelude and Fugue in     F major    BWV 856    Book 1

Prelude and Fugue in    C minor    BWV 871    Book 2

Prelude and Fugue in    G major    BWV 884    Book 2

Prelude and Fugue in    G minor    BWV 885    Book 2

Prelude and Fugue in     D sharp minor    BWV 877    Book 2   

Prelude and Fugue in    E flat major        BWV 852    Book 1


Interval

Prelude and Fugue in    F sharp major    BWV 882    Book 2

Prelude and Fugue in.   F sharp minor    BWV 859    Book 1

Prelude and Fugue in    A minor             BWV 865    Book 1 

Prelude and Fugue in. C sharp major    BWV 848    Book 1

Prelude and Fugue in    B major            BWV 868    BOOK 1   

Prelude and Fugue IN    F Minor        BWV 857    Book 1   

Prelude and Fugue in     A flat major    BWV 862    Book 1


The concert was promoted by Metronome Recordings Ltd (located nearby) and made possible by the generous offer of the hall from former professional clarinettist David White












   

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