Gerhard Richter: Bach (1992)
In my dream, J. S. Bach arrives to play on the clavier some of the pieces he’s written down, but as he plays, the strangeness of the temperament and lowness of pitch, the flexibility of beat and rhythmic declamation yields some of the things he plays unrecognized, for moments, or even a long while.
This music that we own, this familiar canon, under his fingers it is so strange, so far from the received “this-is-how-it-goes” we have — that I don’t know the pieces he spins out.
We heard you play in the complete Art of Fugue in Boston. Unforgetable — the emotional temperature in the room went way up!
I read your “Bachtrauma” post before going to sleep last night, and dreamt that I was in a house of mirrors while Bach – unseen, in the next room – was trying to figure out how to play Jordan Hall’s new Steinway D!