Till Fellner, Bach, Prelude & Fugue

Therefore, they begin by working on the Prelude. After the master makes a first assessment of
the performance - “I understand that you would like to give it a more dance-like character, right?
It's a little bit too fast, the tempo, for that. Also, it sounds a little bit dry, a little bit too
short”-, they work on harmony (“the problem is that what I want to hear are the harmony and the
bass”, “I would like to hear the tonic and the dominant”), the coordination of both hands (“Can
you try to make chamber music between your hands so that they play together?”, “Even on
harpsichord, it's sometimes nice to have a chord together”), the use of the pedal and character
in general.
An issue that is very common in all of Bach's music is the use of sequences. On this, the master
warns: “It is a little bit boring if you play one bar, one bar, one bar, one bar starting in bar twentysix. So let's try to connect these sequences”.
In the Fugue, the master says that time is admirable, and highlights two characteristics of this
fugue in particular: it is cantabile, and – something that is very unusual - the theme changes:
“It's not so often the case that, in the well-temperated piano, that he changes the intervals of the
theme”.