Cristiano Gaudio - Bach on the Edge. A Selection of Harpsichord Works (2026)

A vocation for experimentation was unquestionably an essential component of Bach’s mindset. It was a desire to surpass, in every possible respect, whatever had been achieved up until then in a given genre or musical form, while extending to the utmost the resources and technical capabilities of individual instruments and the human voice (and thus also of individual performers). All of which was to be accomplished in the search for a perfection that is both aesthetic and spiritual.

This ceaseless aspiration – cultivated from the beginning to the very end of his life – to go beyond the limits shapes the works selected for the second solo album by harpsichordist Cristiano Gaudio, whose debut recording was awarded a Diapason d’Or and Classica’s Choc de l’Année. From the dazzling virtuosity of the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue to the contrapuntal complexity of the Ricercare a 6 from The Musical Offering; from the art of transcription, magnified in the arrangement of the Violin Sonata no. 2 to the "twelve-tone" last fugue of The Well-Tempered Clavier Book I, whose subject exceptionally includes all the notes of the chromatic scale – all these works embody that bold erosion of the limits that Bach’s music pursued as its true mission, thereby giving both performers and listeners, for over three centuries, the thrill of an intellectual adventure – indeed even a physical experience – that is constantly on the edge.

Tracklist
01 Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 903_ I. Fantasia
02 Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 903_ II. Fuga
03 Sonata in D Minor, BWV 964_ I. Adagio
04 Sonata in D Minor, BWV 964_ II. Fuga. Allegro
05 Sonata in D Minor, BWV 964_ III. Andante
06 Sonata in D Minor, BWV 964_ IV. Allegro
07 Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier, BWV 731 (Transcr. for Harpsichord by Cristiano Gaudio)
08 Prelude in C Minor, BWV 921
09 Musikalisches Opfer, BWV 1079_ Ricercar a 6
10 O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß, BWV 622 (Transcr. for Harpsichord by Cristiano Gaudio)
11 Das wohltemperierte Klavier I_ XXIV. Prelude and Fugue in B Minor, BWV 869_ I. Praeludium. Andante
12 Das wohltemperierte Klavier I_ XXIV. Prelude and Fugue in B Minor, BWV 869_ II. Fuga a 4. Largo
13 Toccata in D Major, BWV 912
14 Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott, BWV 721 (Transcr. for Harpsichord by Cristiano Gaudio)