Once you open this album on Qobuz, you are in danger of being thrown into an abyss of perplexity. But once you get over the initial surprise, you may find yourself asking if you've been had: if you're the butt of a joke by Friedrich Gulda, who has pawned his concert Steinway for a badly-tuned Japanese koto. But it's "just" Gulda playing Bach on a clavichord that seems to be buckling under pressure or thanks to funny sound engineering. And then, slowly, it works its charms on us, and we are willing participants in a sound-test by Friedrich Gulda on a mean instrument that he seems to be really beating up on, distorting the strings, trying to get at sounds that the humble clavichord really isn't made for. It's as if we've snuck in to grin at the sight of this musician playing extracts from the Well-Tempered Clavier on an instrument which is anything but. Recorded at home, or at a concert at the end of the 1970s, these records, now out in the light of day, bear witness to the pure-musical research of an artist who has never stopped questioning and pushing at the boundaries of musical convention. © François Hudry/Qobuz