For those unaware, Bach’s Das Wohltemperirte Clavier represents the final and most important stage of Bach’s teaching program, which accompanies the youth eager to learn from elementary to proficiency level. It gives compete instruction on keyboard technique and interpretation, thorough-bass, composition and improvisation, counterpoint, musical form, aesthetics and rhetoric.

On the occasion of the tercentenary of the composition of Book One of the WTC, Enrico Baiano, one of the leading harpsichordists of his generation, offers us his own reading of this masterpiece.

A unique feature of this recording is that, for the first time ever, it has been realized on three different keyboard instruments, i.e. the fortepiano, harpsichord, and clavichord/ together, they represent the variety of nuances which were available to the composer in his historical context.

In consequence, every detail of text, sound, articulation and performance is carefully studied and creatively interpreted.

Ruan Lu is a doctoral candidate in piano performance at the Trossingen State University of Music in Germany. She previously served as an assistant professor at the Zhejiang Conservatory of Music. Her research focuses on piano, piano chamber music, artistic direction, and harpsichord performance.

She is fluent in Italian, English, and German. She attended the Affiliated High School of the Xi’an Conservatory of Music and received her undergraduate and master’s degrees in piano performance and piano chamber music from the Monteverdi Conservatory of Music in Italy.

1. Chopin: Andante spianato & Grande Polonaise, Op. 22 [14:38]
2. Chopin: Ballade, Op. 23: No. 1 in G Minor [09:17]
3. Chopin: Ballade, Op. 38: No. 2 in F Major [07:34]
4. Chopin: Ballade, Op. 47: No. 3 in A-Flat Major [07:12]
5. Chopin: Ballade, Op. 52: No. 4 in F Minor [11:02]

This simply mesmerizing, heavenly and immaculately sculpted new recording opens on the sumptuous elegance of Chopin: Andante spianato & Grande Polonaise, Op. 22 and then we are gifted the ornate, veritably crystalline Chopin: Ballade, Op. 23: No. 1 in G Minor, the embroidered Chopin: Ballade, Op. 38: No. 2 in F Major, the set rounding out on the decadently resplendent Chopin: Ballade, Op. 47: No. 3 in A-Flat Major, coming to a close on the sheer gossamer of the engaging Chopin: Ballade, Op. 52: No. 4 in F Minor.

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