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.