Any composer’s Op.1 is a big deal. Bach modelled his own after Kuhnau’s 'Neue Clavier Übung', books 1 and 2 of which were published in 1689 and 1692. Bach’s ability to ‘see’ and create a long-term ‘project’ has its spooky beginnings here.
Although the music that inhabits the six Partitas was ready and waiting, rather than publish them together, Bach staggered their delivery. Partita 1 came in 1726, with the other five appearing gradually over the next four years, until finally in 1731 the entire six Partitas were presented as his ‘Clavir [sic] Ubung . . . Opus 1 . . . 1731’. Bach infuses this seemingly effortless music with godly patterns and personal algorithms of stunning brilliance. Many pages have been spent in the pursuit of secret codes in Bach’s music: for many, a contentious subject. Bach began by publishing Partita 1 in 1726 – when he was 41 years old. Needless to say the final movement of the set (the 41st movement), has as its theme a subject containing 14 notes. The family name not only gave rise to a direct musical melody [BACH = B flat/A/C/B natural], but for Johann Sebastian a pair of deliciously mirrored numbers with which he was wont to sign his name at beginnings and endings in particular. If A=1, B=2 etc. (I and J are counted as the same letter),

Francesco Tristano plays Buxtehude, Bach and Tristano
“Long Walk” – the twenty-year-old Johann Sebastian Bach undertook one such walk in 1705, when he hiked the 250 miles from Arnstadt to Lübeck to hear Dietrich Buxtehude, who was famous for his organ playing. The visit had been planned to last only a few weeks but turned into a three-month period of study, during which Buxtehude became Bach’s teacher.
Dietrich Buxtehude (1637–1707) is arguably the most famous early Baroque German composer. As Kantor at the Marienkirche in Lübeck he occupied one of the leading positions in Germany’s musical life. His musical language is notable for its wealth of imagination and harmonic boldness. Central to Francesco Tristano’s new album is Buxtehude’s most important keyboard composition, the aria La capricciosa, thirty-two variations on the folksong Kraut und Rüben.
Bach’s three months with Buxtehude left a lasting mark on his musical output, a point that emerges with particular clarity from one of his most famous late works, the Goldberg Variations. Like La capricciosa, this set of variations is in G major. Both pieces, moreover, are formally identical and reveal many musical parallels. In his final variation, the Quodlibet, Bach even quotes the Kraut und Rüben theme as a homage to his teacher.
In 1974 Bach’s personal copy of the printed score of the Goldberg Variations came to light and was found to contain a kind of appendix in the form of fourteen canons on the first eight bass notes of the Aria. This appendix is now officially numbered as BWV 1087. In Long Walk, Francesco Tristano has combined and, as it were, “remixed” these sophisticated miniatures, in that way exploring the more playful dimension of Bach’s learned counterpoint. Tristano picks up another Baroque tradition with the second of his pieces in this album: Ground Bass is essentially a chaconne, a set of variations on an ostinato bass similar to the one that Buxtehude created three centuries earlier in his Ciaccona BuxWV 160.
In Long Walk Francesco Tristano relocates Baroque music in the here and now, which he does not only through his interpretation and adaptation of the music of Buxtehude and Bach but also in terms of the recording’s use of technology, which opens up new dimensions with regard to sonority: twelve microphones of differing tonal characteristics were used in the Kyoto Concert Hall in Japan, which was chosen because of its exceptional resonance. They capture the undistorted sound of the Yamaha CFX concert grand on which Francesco Tristano performs these works, a high-tech piano that is the result of many years of research into materials, tone colours and construction techniques.

玛利亚·若奥·皮雷斯（Maria Joao Pires 1944- ），葡萄牙女钢琴家，出生于里斯本。4岁首次登台，6岁举行独奏音乐会，被称为神童，9岁参加里斯本国际钢琴比赛获第一名，16岁在里斯本音乐学院毕业后在柏林参加国际青年钢琴比寒获第二名，同年在李斯特钢琴比赛获第一名。随后到慕尼黑留学，师从恩格尔继续深造，1970年纪念贝多芬200周年，在布鲁塞尔举办的贝多芬钢琴比赛获第一名，从此受到瞩目。
皮雷斯的演奏，音色极美，又善于在节奏与分句处理上表现出细微的变化，她演奏的莫扎特、肖邦都极具魅力。她和杜梅、王健一起，已形成室内乐的最佳搭档，其演绎的室内乐作品有一种清新的美感。
曲目介绍：
第一号帕蒂塔（BWV 825）：巴赫为键盘而作的这一套组曲，遗留下来有七首。其中第一首完成于1726年；此后到1731年为止陆续完成其他各曲。因巴赫把第一至第六合集成《古钢琴练习曲》中的第二卷， 所以现在所称的这套组曲其实只有6首（BWV825-830）。这张唱片里面，皮雷斯演奏的是巴赫的第一号帕蒂塔（BWV 825）。Partita是意大利语，意思本是变奏曲之意，17世纪才有了组曲的意思。
第二号法国组曲（BWV 813）：是巴赫在1721至1724年左右创作的一套六首组曲（BWV812-817)中的第二首，这套法国组曲诞生的时间也大致是巴赫在科腾担任宫廷乐长的时候，也刚好是巴赫与他第二任的妻子安娜玛德莲娜新婚不久的时候。那应该是巴赫生命中最为美满幸福的一段时间，而这套法国组曲中也真的充满了温柔和甜蜜。据传这套曲子是巴赫为安娜而写的。巴赫在世时始终没有出版过这套作品，直到近百年后，这套曲子才被冠名为“法国组曲”，并且流传于世。
第三号英国组曲（BWV 808）：巴赫的英国组曲是17世纪键盘名作，根据最新考证应该写于巴赫服务魏玛宫廷时期（1708－1717）。各曲都充满协奏曲的华丽精神，具有典型的德国风格，因为巴赫将乐谱献给某英国贵族，所以称之为《英国组曲》《英国组曲》共有六号，在规模、表现力以及情感上都比巴赫的同类键盘作品《法国组曲》要庞大。这些组曲有的短小但意境广博，有的具有浪漫的气息，有的清新内敛，有的庄严肃穆。用现代钢琴来演奏这部巴洛克的复调作品更有一番迷人的风韵。