"The Well-Tempered Clavier is not a cycle, it's a collection," Andreas Staier told QOBUZ in an interview in 2015, on the occasion of the concerts that the German harpsichordist and pianofortist was to present in Dijon, Royaumont and at the Philharmonie de Paris. To present is the right word, for Staier, like a passionate teacher, explained the genesis and sources of this vast ensemble to his audience with science and a certain humour, explaining how Bach had compiled a synthesis of all his sources and influences.
Staier came late to this gigantic corpus with the seriousness that has always characterised him when he commits himself fully into a genre. After Schubert, then after Schumann, he has now turned his attention to this sumptuous work, the Second Book of which he recorded in the summer of 2020 in Berlin's Teldex Studio.
To begin this complete work with its most complex facet, Andreas Staier uses a modern harpsichord built in Paris in 2004 by Anthony Sidey and Frédéric Bal, modelled on a German instrument that came from the workshop of Hieronymus Albrecht Hass in Hamburg in 1734. Here we discover all of Andreas Staier's talent, with his unique blend of dazzling virtuosity, elaborate ornamentation, and rigorous construction where chromaticism and rhythmic superimpositions become perfectly discernible beneath his fingers. © François Hudry/Qobuz