J.S. Bach: The Well “Tampered” Clavier Book One (arranged Sam Post) - Sam Post; Ralitza Patcheva

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Sam Post, and his piano-playing partner Ralitza Pacheva, play a sensational Book 1 of J.S. Bach’s Well-“Tampered” Clavier here. More about that title later. Both books (24 preludes and fugues) work through the 12 major and 12 minor keys on the instrument as it was constructed at that time. 

Unequalled in the profligacy of their inventiveness, the books were intended partly as a manual of keyboard playing and composition, partly as a systematic exploration of harmony, and partly as a celebration of tuning technique – the “Well-tempering” that enables playing in any key without having to retune the piano. The twist in the title may sound whimsical, but it is not as it restores the Pythagorean (and other mathematical elements) of the composition. As the elements of melodic line, harmonic construction and rhythmic invention are unfurled and unfettered, the “Tampered” vs “Tempered” title makes its charm even clearer.

Post’s and Ralitza’s quirky and clever interpretation joins the annals of great recordings – Glenn Gould’s and Friedrich Gulda’s to cite a couple – of this masterful compositional invention. The fugues, in as many as five voices, are brilliantly constructed and full of dance-like passages and strong, concise melodies, and the preludes can be seen as palimpsests of the poetic distillations of Chopin’s Préludes and Études. Post and Ralitza exploit the full range of the piano’s sonorities; crisp, hard touch is used for the more rhythmically motorised preludes.

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