Das wohltemperierte Klavier
Marathon for the piano
In the words of the Swedish poet Lars Gustafsson*:
‘There must have been a world before
the Trio Sonata in D, a world before the A minor partita,
but what kind of a world?
A Europe of vast empty spaces, unresounding,
everywhere unawakened instruments
where the Musical Offering, the Well-Tempered Clavier
never passed across the keys.’
You can experience it once again in the intimacy of Kaaistudio’s: Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, played by Alain Franco; 96 short compositions, each with an individual character, its own dynamics and an individual time sequence. Alain Franco: ‘I regard them as 96 ‘novellas’ which I link together by applying the principles of montage and so arrive at a form that hovers somewhere between opera and a novel.’
• Alain Franco is a pianist and conductor. He has worked as a musical dramaturge with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Meg Stuart and others.
* Lars Gustaffson, Le silence du monde avant Bach, poèmes traduits du suédois par l’auteur en personne et Guillevic, Éditions Arfuyen, 1984