In a live recording from the Amerikahaus, Munich, Friedrich Gulda reveals the versatility of his keyboard playing. On the clavichord he plays three preludes and fugues from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (in A minor BWV 889, in C major BWV 846, in A flat major BWV 886) on the piano; his own re-working of Schubert’s song Der Wanderer, ending with Debussy’s […]

This incomplete masterpiece was Bach’s last and greatest effort in the area of fugue writing and musical transformation. In contrast with the earlier Well Tempered Clavier, this collection of fugues and canons all share not only the same key but also the same subject. Recent handwriting and watermark studies have shown that The Art of the Fugue was composed about […]

The Italian pianist Busoni’s important achievements as a composer were long over-shadowed by the fact that he was generally thought the greatest piano virtuoso after Liszt. He also made his mark as a respected teacher of both piano playing and composition, and as an editor of Bach’s keyboard music. His thoughts on Bach’s music have been highly influential, although his […]

Pianists post-Liszt, however, blended improvisation with playing from memory so that “Performing a composition by heart fostered the impression that interpretation could have the freedom and spontaneity of an improvisation, but linked to music of greater complexity and–implicity–quality” (from After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance by Kenneth Hamilton, 2008). While there’s some element of improvisation (interpretation is […]

New Urtext sheet music of the Goldberg Variations by Bach has been published by Piano Street today: The complete score is now available for download for Gold members from the Piano Street Sheet Music Library. ***FREE SHEET MUSIC SAMPLE*** Have a look at the FREE sheet music sample of the Aria and Variation 1 while listening to Murray Perahia playing […]

In Katie Hafner´s recent book; A Romance on Three Legs – Glenn Goulds Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano (2008), the author has avoided well known and often exaggerated stories concerning Gould´s eccentricity. Instead, she focuses on Gould´s musical perfectionism, which was, of course, also quite eccentric. The main characters in the book are Gould, the Steinway grand of his […]

Since the discovery of a new Bach Cantata, found among the papers of Japanese pianist Chieko Hara who died in Japan in 2001 aged 86,  recent findings of other handwritten materials include two previously unknown manuscripts written by Bach when he was a teenage organist. The handwritten manuscripts, dating from about 1700, are copies of organ music composed by Dietrich […]