Bach Prelude No. 15 in g major from Well-Tempered Clavier II, BWV 884 harpsichord Andrea Chezzi

Описание: J.S.Bach Praeludium 15 from Well-Tempered Clavier II, BWV 884
Harpsichrdist Andrea Chezzi
Harpsichord by Fabio Rigali (2024),
from 17th century Italian models
Colorno (Parma, Italy)
December 6th, 2025

0:01 - Part 1
0:25 - Part 2
0:49 - Part 3
1:38 - Part 4

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The Well-Tempered Clavier book 2. The two major primary sources for this collection of Preludes and Fugues are the "London Original" (LO) manuscript, dated between 1739 and 1742, with scribes including Bach, his wife Anna Magdalena and his oldest son Wilhelm Friedeman, which is the basis for Version A of WTC 2, and for Version B, that is the version published by the 19th-century Bach-Gesellschaft, a 1744 copy primarily written by Johann Christoph Altnickol (Bach's son-in-law), with some corrections by Bach, and later also by Altnickol and others. (from wikipedia)

Bach published his keyboard music with a clear didactic objective. If his students could master the increasingly complex works, they would slowly but surely attain the perfect autonomy – or autonomous perfection – of the ideal musician. The Wohltemperirte Clavier formed the pinnacle of this logic. However, that didn’t mean that all the preludes and fugues were equally highbrow. Take, for instance, the 15th pair of works from the WTC II, in the comfortable key of G major, which put on a great show of virtuosity, but are actually quite manageable with regard to technique. Bach definitely wanted this fugue on the programme, but he had to search around a bit for the most fitting prelude. He probably thought that BWV 902a, the first that can be associated with the fugue, was too simple. And BWV 902 seemed too elaborate. So in the end he opted for BWV 884.

Not only is this prelude very playable, but it can also be divided neatly into four, with a repeat coming quarter of the way through the piece and a big cadence at the halfway point. To avoid any hint of regularity, Bach alternates small groups of two, four and mainly three bars, to give an even more flowing effect.

Compared to earlier versions of the fugue – which possibly date right back to Bach’s first position in Arnstadt – Bach did plenty of work on the Clavier version. You could almost call the basis a sketch: a written-out improvised fugue, with the theme accompanied mainly by chords. Decades later, this gave rise to a fully elaborated three-part little wonder, with twelve new bars in the closing section, in which a lot of extra harmonic activity suddenly takes place. To crown it all, Bach rewrote the last bar, so that it now races to the final chord with extremely fast notes.
(from www.bachvereniging.nl)