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 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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