Konstantin Lifschitz Plays Bach
The Well-Tempered Clavier
VAI DVD 4488 $39.95

(Books 1 and 2), BWV 846-893

Bach's magnum opus, The Well-Tempered Clavier, is, for keyboard artists, a daunting master-piece exploiting the very limits of the instrument and those who brave its challenges. The young Russian pianist Konstantin Lifschitz has made Bach a specialty in his programming and his performances of the complete Well-Tempered Clavier - played from memory - in New York and Miami have elicited superlatives from the critics.

Note: In an interesting variation in performance practice, Konstantin Lifschitz combines the two books of the Well-Tempered Clavier by following each prelude and fugue from Book I with the corresponding prelude and fugue from Book II, thus keeping the key signatures together and creating a steady progression through the scale to the end of the series.

Live 2008, 265 min., Color, Stereo, All regions

" The Miami International Piano Festival's Master Series opened... [with] a unique event. In marathon afternoon and evening sessions, Russian- born Konstantin Lifschitz traversed all 48 preludes and fugues that comprise Books I and II of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. [It was] an awesome pianistic display of Baroque musical architecture on the most exalted level."
Lawrence Budmen
Sun-Sentinel (4/2/08)

"Lifschitz was faultless technically, not dropping a single note. His legato approach to Bach is one of moderate tempos and a freely expressive style. Yet his playing had the requisite rhythmic vigor, with pristine clarity even in the most contrapuntal fugues.... But it was this artist's interpretive depth and poetic insight that made his extended traversal of Bach's mighty 48 such a fascinating journey. Lifschitz's subtle balancing of inner voices and terraced dynamics were natural and seamless, his playing always leading the ear on to the next bar."
Lawrence A. Johnson, South Florida Classical Review.com