With almost 70 separate pieces across the 130 minutes of this generous collection, Yuan Sheng surveys a sometimes overlooked aspect of Bach’s industry and genius, as both teacher and family man. This side of him is generally associated with the two notebooks begun for and subsequently compiled by his wife Anna Magdalena, but both of those volumes include several pieces not by Bach himself.
Johann Sebastian regarded Wilhelm Friedemann as the most naturally gifted of his musical children, and some idea of the child’s gifts, and the rigour of his training, may be gleaned from the fact that the notebook dates from 1720, when WF was just ten years of age. The collection follows his standard teaching practice of composing pieces which address particular technical aims – finger exercises, trills, clarity of touch – so that the music itself would teach the student and technique could be derived from the music rather than the other way around.
Much of the material from this Clavierbüchlein became absorbed into the better known collection of two-part Inventions and three-part Sinfonias which JS compiled three years later, but the original sequence is more extensive and more diverse. Almost uniquely on record, Yuan Sheng has recorded and presented the two collections together, affording an invaluable insight into Bach’s creative mind as a teacher and as refiner and reviser of his own music.
Yuan Sheng studied with the ‘high priestess’ of Bach on the piano, Rosalyn Tureck, but he has long made a name for himself as a harpsichordist, pianist and Bach interpreter of the highest pedigree, as well as a teacher of historically informed performance practice in his native China. In this regard, as performer and teacher (like Bach himself) he pursues a multi-branched career across several continents. He has several critically acclaimed albums of Bach to his name on the Piano Classics label including the Goldberg Variations, Partitas and French Suites.
Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (Bach's original spelling: Clavier-Büchlein vor Wilhelm Friedemann Bach) is a collection of keyboard music compiled by Johann Sebastian Bach for his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann with a clear didactic purpose. Most of the pieces included are better known as parts of The Well-Tempered Clavier and the Inventions and Sinfonias. The pieces of the collection are arranged by complexity, beginning with the most simple works.
The works are for “Keyboard” so may be played on any instrument: organ, harpsichord, spinet or clavichord. Bach however considered the clavichord as the best instrument for personal use, because it is able to express most adequate the finest thoughts and a cantabile way of playing.
Played on the clavichord by Yuan Sheng, “China’s premier interpreter of Bach” (International Piano Magazine). A pupil of Solomon Mikowsky (Manhattan School of Music) and notably Rosalyn Tureck Yuan Sheng extensively studied the performance practice of Baroque music. Equally at home at the piano as the harpsichord he has an instinctive feeling for the possibilities, sonorities and touch of the instrument at hand, so that “the listener might easily have imagined the composer at the keyboard” (Boston Intelligencer).
Yuan Sheng’s Bach performances reached over 6 million views on Youtube.
