Offered here for your approval is my first Instagram post, the Photo of the Month for August, and today’s seriousness for BWV 863, the P&F No. 18 in G# minor, a very serious and beautiful P&F in five sharps with lots and lots of double sharps in case your mind wanders. The photograph is of today’s very important studio event, the infamous Rita’s Rep Class, whereby a very few children who are actually not traveling, nor attending camp nor driver’s ed, arrive on a Wednesday morning to play piano for each other, scream out some triad spellings and other rot and, upon satisfying their EVIL PIANO TEACHER, are allowed to stuff themselves (at 10am no less) with Rita’s Italian Ice which has been procured and frozen (Rita’s doesn’t bother to open around here until noon, so advance planning is required). To plump up the event, I told them for what the Well Tempered Clavier was written, and then played them today’s offering. What’s that you say, “For what WAS it written?” Oof, a big question, to be answered before the summer is out. Stay tuned.
As for the P&F in question, it is indeed a weighty affair, one of Bach’s more meditative subjects for the fugue. Gorgeous. Get thee hence to youtube and listen to someone reputable play it (Gould, Tureck, Schiff). It is even more special than Rita’s Italian Ice.