Welcome to Day 5 of the Well-Tempered Project, and the sheer joy of BWV 850, P&F in D Major from WTCI. I invite you to join me in playing through the WTC this summer. It is a useful discipline. So, first: get the music.
Dust off that old copy foisted upon you by your EVIL PIANO TEACHER. Or if you never acquired a copy of the WTC, here is a link to Book 1: (scroll through the sound files and the “autograph” to the first usable pdf — the Czerny edition — and go through the safe and free process of downloading the pdf file. IMSLP is a safe and legal repository of pdf’ed music in the public domain). Or, for the luxury version of all this, drive to your local music store and pick up a lovely Henle edition of WTCI, with it’s yellow paper and stroke-able blue cover.
Now you are ready to join me on this summer meditation. Pianist and wonderful music writer Jeremy Denk wrote in the most sublime article ever written about Bach: “So I say, in all seriousness, if you don’t play an instrument, take one up; take lessons; make the time. After a while, set some Bach on the music stand and play it yourself. Look at the notes on the page, envision the relationships between them. Don’t just press play. Don’t be afraid; we all live too much in fear and awe of the perfectly edited recordings around us. No matter how halting, how un-transcendent, your technique is, I promise that it may be the best Bach you will ever hear.”