András Schiff first recorded Bach's major keyboard works as a young pianist in the 1980s. Nearly three decades later he returned to Das Wohltemperierte Clavier for ECM, with all 48 preludes and fugues of both books on four discs. Bach's cycle through every major and minor key has guided composers from Mozart and Beethoven to Chopin and Brahms. Schiff's second account is lean, clear and dance-minded, the work of a pianist who had spent his career with this music.
The set belongs to Schiff's long return to Bach on ECM, after the Goldberg Variations (2001) and the six Partitas (2007). He recorded both books in August 2011 at the Auditorio of Radiotelevisione svizzera in Lugano, in collaboration with RSI Rete Due, playing his own Steinway. Manfred Eicher produced and Stephan Schellmann was the Tonmeister. Book I (BWV 846-869) fills the first two discs, Book II (BWV 870-893) the other two.
Schiff keeps the sustaining pedal almost out of play, so that each voice of the counterpoint stays distinct and the notes are separated much as on a harpsichord. His ornaments are sparing, his tempi unforced, and the preludes move with a strong sense of song and dance. The scale of the cycle shows in its extremes. In Book I the closing B minor fugue runs almost seven minutes; in Book II the B flat major prelude unfolds over more than seven. Paul Griffiths notes in the booklet how Schiff brings out the "floated melody" and the rhythmic life of music that is so often "song or dance", adding: "Grandeur and intimacy are also here. Wit, too."
In The New York Times (2012), Zachary Woolfe praised Schiff's "crystalline clarity and a rhythmic buoyancy that highlights the works' dance elements". For Kirk McElhearn on MusicWeb International, the set showed "a much more mature pianist", with the pedal used "as little as possible". BBC Music Magazine's guide to the work later named the 2012 version its desert island choice. In the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Reinhard J. Brembeck called it a translation of the cosmos into sound.
Four-CD box on ECM New Series (ECM 2270-73), released in August 2012, with liner notes by Paul Griffiths and texts by Schiff and Peter Gülke.
