Tonebase Bach Stage

Here is my latest attempt at playing Bach - the D minor Minuet from the Anna Magdalena Notebook, Anh 132. 

Each phrase is a shining pearl.  Your attention to detail gives me goosebumps.  I think we see a CD in your future on this one, dear friend!

Here is my take on the F# minor Prelude and Fugue from Book 2 of the Well-Tempered Clavier. These pieces both proceed at a moderate pace and are not particularly difficult technically, (unless like me you find it impossible to play softly), but I nonetheless found them deceptively difficult to learn and memorize. I challenged myself to play them from memory at the recent Tonebase spring concert in March 2025, and that went pretty well. In this follow up recording, there are still some mistakes, but they occur mostly in inconspicuous places!

The fugue is a triple fugue with three separate subjects, each given its own exposition. Bach being Bach, the subjects are then combined with each other in various configurations.

One of my resolutions in my trek through the WTC is to add ornaments liberally as a way of better learning how to execute them. Also, if I play an ornament in an opening  subject, I try to play it in the same place every time the subject should appear, unless impossibly awkward or excessively discordant. In the Fugue I play a long trill on the penultimate note of the first subject(e.g. the G# in the first entrance) and an inverted mordent on the second note of the second subject, (e.g. on the G# in m. 20).

I manage to play them every single time these subjects reappear, except for the very last appearance of the 2nd subject in m. 68. There, all 3 subjects are combined, and I had already worked out some very difficult and tricky fingering before I had decided to add the ornament. My fingering left no room for the mordent, but it seemed too dangerous to try and unlearn my established fingering at this climactic moment of the Fugue.

Both of these ornaments appear occasionally in various editions of the WTC. Several of the pianists in my collection play them here and there, but no one plays them at every single appearance. (That’s okay, they don’t need the practice, but I do!). Schiff, in his Henle edition notes, says he does not like the mordent in the second subject, partly because it is difficult to play – although I’m sure he could play it if he set his mind to it!

I include some further discussion & analysis of the Prelude and Fugue in the YouTube “Description” page. As always, I welcome any comments or feedback.