The Austrian pianist Till Fellner plays Johann Sebastian Bach's fifteen two-part Inventions and fifteen three-part Sinfonias, followed by the fifth French Suite in G major. Bach wrote the Inventions and Sinfonias in the early 1720s for his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, as a method for playing and composing in several voices. Fellner treats them as music first and exercises second, playing a modern grand with a singing line. Every voice stays audible, and fast tempos never sound hurried.

This was Fellner's second Bach album for ECM, following the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier, released in 2004. Born in Vienna, he studied with Alfred Brendel, who encouraged him in the early 1990s to deepen his work on polyphonic music. The recording was made in July 2007 in the Mozartsaal of the Wiener Konzerthaus, with Markus Heiland as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer. The booklet essay is by Jürg Stenzl.

Most of the Inventions last a minute or two, and Fellner gives each its own gesture. The D minor Invention gets crisp finger staccato, while the D minor Sinfonia shows his care in balancing the inner part against the outer two. The F minor Sinfonia, the longest of the fifteen at over three minutes, unfolds as a slow lament in which almost every note grows from three short motifs. In the French Suite the Sarabande is the centre of gravity at more than five minutes, with an evenly paced Allemande at the start and a light, airy Gigue to close.

In Gramophone, Jed Distler wrote that Fellner's "intelligent and characterful pianism consistently embraces the music behind the method book", ranking his version alongside the strongest piano recordings in the catalogue. Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times called him "an elegant, sensitive and impressively articulate Bach player". George Pratt in BBC Music Magazine was most impressed by the F minor Sinfonia, while Patrick Rucker in Fanfare placed the disc among the finest recent Bach recordings on piano. Writing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Jan Brachmann heard how closely singing and thinking, breathing and construction belong together in these pieces.

This is the CD edition, ECM New Series 2043, first released in March 2009, with a booklet essay by Jürg Stenzl.