Bach's Keyboard Music: A Listener's Guide (Unlocking the Masters)

Bach's Keyboard Music: A Listener's Guide (Unlocking the Masters) by Lederer, Victor. paperback edition. ISBN: 9781574671827.

Along with Beethovens sonatas and the purely idiomatic works for piano of Chopin and Debussy, the solo keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach represents the heart of the pianists repertory; in the more specialized field of music for the organ, Bachs primacy seems beyond challenge. This listeners guide to Bachs music for the keyboard provides the interested amateur with a close but non-technical look at these two crucial parts of the masters oeuvre. The composers tendency to work exhaustively in tightly structured formats – such as the 48 preludes and fugues of The Well-Tempered Clavier – provides a natural framework for this study; but the power, beauty, high polish, and occasionally the sheer strangeness of Bachs imagination are carefully examined as well.