Bach: Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, Buch I

CML call number: CD CLASSICAL Bach
Contents: 24 sets of preludes and fugues, BWV 846-869; one prelude and fugue in each key of the tonal system: C major, C minor, C sharp major, C sharp minor, and so on through the scale.
Anthony Tommasini wrote in the New York Times: "Thoughtful. Honest. Sensitive. Musicianly. Such adjectives can sometimes seem like critical code words to indicate that a very admirable performer is not especially exciting. Yet all these terms apply in the best sense to the Austrian pianist Till Fellner. … In 2004 the ECM label released Mr. Fellner's recording of Bach's 'Well-Tempered Clavier,' Book I: lucid, introspective and, when called for, fleet and sprightly performances" ("A Pianist Returns, a Little Bit Shy, a Little Bit Sly," 2/10/07).
From the notes by Dirk Möller, translated by J. Bradford Robinson: "The Well-Tempered Clavier will continue to leave audiences as awestruck as it did Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1827 when he exclaimed … : 'I was induced to confess: it was as if the harmony of the ages were communing with itself, as it may have happened in God's bosom shortly before the creation of the world.'"