Interpreting and understanding piano music: Bach's well tempered keyboard

A book on how to interpret and understand piano music.

What is interpretation? I think the vast majority of music listeners (or even book readers) don’t comprehend that interpretation even exists or what it is. They see a work, and a musician playing that work. They get that each artist has their own way of playing, but it is as if there is the way the piece is supposed to be played and the better you are, the closer you get to it. The important part of playing the notes is achieved by every professional, or so they see it.

I try in this book to transmit what a pianist actually faces when approaching a piece of music. What actually goes on when deciding how to turn these notes into music. The vast pool of decisions and their consequences for further decisions, and their impact on how the piece sounds at the end.

This book has two main goals: to help the pianist who wants to play Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier and transmit to the reader – anyone interested in music or in art in general – what is, and what goes into the decisions surrounding a musical interpretation. What goes on in this passage from notes to sound.