There is no hint of historically oriented performance here as pianist Piotr Anderszewski performs pieces, half of them to be exact from Book II of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 870-893, in a way that apparently no other keyboardist, modern or historical, has ever done. There are various surprises in Anderszewski's interpretation, but the big one is that he departs from Bach's published order. He is straightforward about what he is doing, asserting in the notes that "it seems to me that [the published order] is not one in which the pieces follow each other with an emotional, musical inevitability." Anderszewski supplies his own ordering, which leaves the C major prelude and fugue (but not the C minor) at the beginning and the B major and minor pieces at the end. In between are pairs in fourth- and third-related keys, building toward a somberly slow Fugue in G sharp minor. The idea makes sense on its own terms, and Anderszewski could cite in his favor that some of these pieces were probably written much earlier than others and were roped by Bach into the final set; he didn't sit down and write them out in sequence. Anderszewski's execution is both rigorous and attractive. He perceives the works as "character pieces" and "realised the particular importance of giving each theme of each fugue a specific character." These are carried through the fugues with impressive consistency and control. Throughout, Anderszewski keeps his piano to chamber dimensions, and the variety with the overall quiet dynamic levels becomes quite absorbing. The downside is that although Bach reworked his compositions in many ways, he never did so in anything like this way, and, with a composer as systematically minded as Bach, one hesitates to fool with basic structures. Taken on its terms, however, Anderszewski's performance succeeds.
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