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Pierre-Laurent Aimard

J.S. Bach - The Well-tempered Clavier

Deutsche Grammophon

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Pierre-Laurent Aimard's Notes from the Well-Tempered Clavier Tour
1 Praeludium I
2 Fuga I
3 Praeludium II
4 Fuga II
5 Praeludium III
6 Fuga III
7 Praeludium IV
8 Fuga IIV
9 Praeludium V
10 Fuga V
11 Praeludium XIII
12 Fuga XIII
13 Praeludium XIV
14 Fuga XIV
15 Praeludium XV
16 Fuga XV
17 Praeludium XVI
18 Fuga XVI
19 Praeludium XVII
20 Fuga XII
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Pierre-Laurent Aimard is about to embark on a personal artistic journey. The French pianist will spend much of the next year in company with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, digging deep beneath the surface of one of the composer's greatest works. Aimard's Bach odyssey will span four continents, reaching audiences in fifteen countries with thirty-four performances featuring the first book of The Well-tempered Clavier. This ambitious project stands as a major landmark in the development of an artist acclaimed worldwide for the imaginative eloquence and poetic insight of his music-making. Aimard's latest Deutsche Grammophon album, scheduled for release on August 19, 2014, presents his mature thoughts on The Well-tempered Clavier Book I, embracing everything from the sublime stillness of its opening Prelude in C major to the labyrinthine twists of the final Fugue in B minor.

It has been said that Bach perfected nature in The Well-tempered Clavier. The work's first book presents twelve pairs of preludes and fugues in each of the twelve major and minor keys. Its contents amount to a creative dialogue between tradition and modernity: Bach here shows his genius for invention and reinvention in the ancient form of the fugue, based on clear themes that are repeated and varied according to more or less fixed rules, and in his diverse preludes. Aimard's approach, which reflects the humanity of Bach's art, flows from a detailed knowledge of the individual movements of The Well-tempered Clavier Book I and of how they combine to create an infinite musical cosmos.

This release is Pierre-Laurent Aimard's second recording of Bach. In 2008 his Deutsche Grammophon release of The Art of Fugue was a phenomenal critical and commercial success. "The day it was released," commented the Los Angeles Times, "Pierre-Laurent Aimard's recording of Bach's The Art of Fugue was the top-selling classical recording on iTunes. A week later, it debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's classical chart. The CD – sublime performances of fathomless fugues from Bach's last days on Earth – is exactly where it belongs."

  • Crystalline clarity and razor-sharp articulation by Pierre-Laurent Aimard at 2023 SIPF/ THE STRAIGHTS TIMES
    Posted At: June 14, 2023 12:00 AM
    Pierre-Laurent Aimard is widely acclaimed as a key figure in the music of our time and has had close collaborations with many leading composers including György Ligeti whose complete works for piano he has recorded. He has also worked with Stockhausen, George Benjamin, and Pierre Boulez who appointed Aimard, aged 19, to become the Ensemble intercontemporain´s first solo pianist. Praised by The Guardian as “...
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  • Bay Area audiences will be able to experience top artists in wide range of musical eras / The Mercury News
    Posted At: October 29, 2018 12:00 AM

    Bay Area audiences will be able to experience two events featuring three top pianists this weekend in programs covering a wide range of musical eras and styles. Appearances by violinist Hilary Hahn and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra are also waiting in the wings, and the Young People's Symphony Orchestra marks a special anniversary. Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich - who are partners ...
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  • Pierre-Laurent Aimard, in an extraordinary performance of Ligeti's Etudes at Queen Elizabeth Hall / The Independent
    Posted At: May 15, 2018 12:00 AM

    Gyorgy Ligeti's piano Etudes stretched the limits of what it was thought technically possible for a human – as opposed to a machine – to play. Yet the spur for their creation was his own inadequate piano technique. He drew a parallel with Cezanne's trouble with perspective: the apples and pears in the painter's still-lifes seemed perpetually on the point of rolling away, and his table-cloths ...
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  • Pierre-Laurent Aimard comes to SF with Messiaen birdsongs in mind / The Mercury
    Posted At: February 28, 2018 12:00 AM

    Famed French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard is a living link to composer Olivier Messiaen. Born in Lyon, the brilliant French pianist studied at the Paris Conservatory and became a protégé of both Messiaen and his wife, pianist Yvonne Loriod. Aimard's new recording of Messiaen's "Catalogue d'oiseaux" is out this month, and in this weekend's appearance for San Francisco Performances, he'll pl...
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  • Tanglewood Takes Flight. Pierre-Laurent Aimard connects birdsong and music / The Berkshire Eagle
    Posted At: July 30, 2017 12:00 AM

    Birds don't sing for humans, Mass Audubon ornithologist Wayne Petersen told the Tanglewood audience. They sing to establish territory, attract a mate or warn of danger. That hasn't prevented human fascination with birds and birdsong at least as far back as cave drawings. Who wouldn't want to be able to sing like a thrush (some sopranos do)? Or, for that matter, soar like an eagle?   &nbs...
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  • Pierre-Laurent Aimard with Cleveland Orchestra set for Ligeti's Piano Concerto / clevelandclassical.com
    Posted At: May 16, 2017 12:00 AM

    Although French-born pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard plays a wide range of literature, he has a special affinity for the avant-garde music of Hungarian composer György Ligeti. This weekend, Cleveland audiences will have the excitement of hearing him tackle Ligeti's phenomenally difficult Piano Concerto in partnership with Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra. Performances begin...
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  • Listen to this week's Red River Radio - Cleveland Orchestra concert featuring Pierre-Laurent Aimard
    Posted At: August 11, 2016 12:00 AM

    Airs Monday, Auguest 5, at 1 p.m. On this week's concert from the Cleveland Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra honors Pierre Boulez with a concert from the archives featuring maestro Boulez leading the orchestra in L'Ascension by Messiaen, two works for piano by Ravel with his Piano Concerto in G major and his Piano Concerto for the Left Hand featuring pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and this concert ...
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  • Catalogue d'Oiseaux - Pierre-Laurent Aimard treats Suffolk to 18-hour tour de force / theguardian
    Posted At: June 21, 2016 12:00 AM

    What began in the Snape Maltings cafe with the assertive song of the black-eared wheatear, as the sun rose over the Alde river, ended just before midnight in a darkened Britten Studio with the sound of a booming bittern. For the centrepiece of his final festival as artistic director at Aldeburgh, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, chose to perform Catalogue d'Oiseaux, the longest and perhaps the greatest of all ...
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  • Pierre-Laurent Aimard commemorates tenth anniversary of the death of Gyorgy Ligeti / examiner.com
    Posted At: June 15, 2016 12:00 AM

    This past Sunday (June 12) marked the tenth anniversary of the death of György Ligeti in 2006. Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard chose to commemorate this occasion by adding a new entry to the Explore the Score Web site, which is hosted by the Ruhr Piano Festival in Germany. Aimard has been populating the section of this site devoted to Ligeti's piano works with selections from two of Ligeti's collectio...
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  • Listen to audioBoom podcast with Pierre-Laurent Aimard
    Posted At: March 18, 2016 12:00 AM

    Pierre-Laurent Aimard, the French pianist who last year embarked on a personal artistic journey with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, digging deep beneath the surface of one of the composer's greatest works, released the first book of The Well-tempered Clavier on Deutsche Grammophon. The album presents his mature thoughts on The Well-tempered Clavier Book I, embracing ever...
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  • Pierre-Laurent Aimard plays George Benjamin's - Shadowlines uniting prelude and canon / The New York Times
    Posted At: August 19, 2015 12:00 AM

    It was appropriate that Pierre-Laurent Aimard, one of our most lucid, instructive pianists, gave a solo recital late Monday evening in the form of a class. But this wasn't one of those dry high school lectures you snoozed through or skipped. Part of the intimate A Little Night Music series at the Kaplan Penthouse, which has proved a boon for Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart festival, the concert felt m...
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  • Pierre-Laurent Aimard explores Ligeti?s works through new interactive website / New York Times
    Posted At: May 27, 2015 12:00 AM

    The composer Gyorgy Ligeti's Piano Études are considered by some scholars to be the most important contribution to the genre since the works of Chopin. But with influences as varied as sub-Saharan African music and fractal geometry, they place demands on the performer that a printed score cannot fully render. Enter the soloist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who worked side by side with Ligeti for ...
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  • Contemporary music shines at Teatro Colon compliments of Pierre-Laurent Aimard / Buenos Aires Herald
    Posted At: May 11, 2015 12:00 AM

    In recent weeks an important panorama of contemporary music was presented at the Colón. During a week, the CETC (Centre for Experimentation) offered an integral of the Iannis Xenakis Quartets, a retrospective on Francisco Kröpfl's production and an integral of Marta Lambertini's chamber music on literary texts. And to crown it all, the start of the Colón Contemporáneo in the Mai...
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  • Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich in All-Boulez Program / New York Times
    Posted At: March 18, 2015 12:00 AM

    Pierre Boulez emerged in the late 1940s in Paris as a combative modernist, the brash new leader of the avant-garde. By 1952 he declared that any musician who had not felt the "necessity of the dodecaphonic language" was "of no use." Despite subsequent decades of winning over mainstream classical music audiences through his work as a conductor with lucid, colorful performances of everything from Wagner op...
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  • Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich bring Boulez birthday to Orchestra Hall / Chicago Classical Review
    Posted At: March 17, 2015 12:00 AM

    ​Though Pierre Boulez has been a local legend as principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and since 2006 as conductor emeritus, most CSO patrons have had limited exposure to his compositions, and fewer still know the finer points of his place in history as a titan of postwar experimentalism. While his cool and exacting conducting style has formed the basis of his public persona s...
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  • Pierre-Laurent Aimard plays Pierre Boulez@NYC's Zankel Hall / Wall Street Journal
    Posted At: March 16, 2015 12:00 AM

    The French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard first worked with the composer Pierre Boulez when, at age 19, he joined Mr. Boulez's chamber orchestra Ensemble Intercontemporain. Decades later-Mr. Boulez is fast approaching his 90th birthday-Mr. Aimard has become a respected interpreter of the composer. During Monday's all-Boulez program, Mr. Aimard and frequent collaborator pianist Tamara Stefanovich jointly p...
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  • Aimard on Boulez: A Tribute on the Composer's 90th / San Francisco Classical Voice
    Posted At: March 12, 2015 12:00 AM

    On the eve of composer and conductor Pierre Boulez's 90th birthday, pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich bring an all-Boulez program to Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley on March 12. The duo, known for their expertise in Boulez, will play a program of seminal piano works by Boulez, who will turn 90 on March 26, which include the rigorous Structures, Book Two, and Notation...
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  • Pierre-Laurent Aimard - WETA - CD Pick of the Week
    Posted At: March 2, 2015 12:00 AM

    Pierre-Laurent Aimard embarked on an artistic journey into the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Digging deep beneath the surface of one of the composer's greatest works, Aimard's Bach odyssey will span four continents, reaching audiences in fifteen countries with thirty-four performances featuring the first book of The Well-tempered Clavier. Aimard's latest Deutsche Grammophon album prese...
    Bookmark and Share

  • Pierre-Laurent Aimard - Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier / New Classical Tracks
    Posted At: January 14, 2015 12:00 AM

    Listen to Julie Amacher's New Classical Tracks interview. New Classical Tracks is Syndicated airing Nationally on PRI: Classical 24 & Statewide on Minnesota Public Radio.   READ THE TRANSCRIPT BELOW Most of the people I know who truly idolize and understand the music of J.S. Bach are well-trained musicians. They've studied the composer and his works, and remain in awe of hi...
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  • Pierre-Laurent Aimard - The Well-Tempered Clavier I / The Washington Post interview
    Posted At: October 31, 2014 12:00 AM

    Pierre-Laurent Aimard is a thinker at the piano and a champion of contemporary music. Not until six years ago, already well-established in his career, did he make his first foray into Bach with The Art of Fugue. Now, he has returned to that composer; he is touring with Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier after taking a sabbatical from performing to immerse himself in the music. On Friday, he is coming to...
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  • Pierre-Laurent Aimard - Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier / WFMT: New Release of the Week
    Posted At: October 19, 2014 12:00 AM

    Pierre-Laurent Aimard is about to embark on a personal artistic journey. The French pianist will spend much of the next year in company with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, digging deep beneath the surface of one of the composer's greatest works. Aimard's Bach odyssey will span four continents, reaching audiences in fifteen countries with thirty-four performances featuring the first book of T...
    Bookmark and Share

  • Decoding Debussy with Pierre-Laurent Aimard / NPR
    Posted At: September 26, 2014 12:00 AM

    Claude Debussy ignored the old rules about how to write music and in the process created a brave new world of sonic possibilities. To mark the Debussy sesquicentennial, French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard stopped by to spin a few of his favorite Debussy recordings. The 54-year-old pianist knows a few things about adventurous music himself. At age 19, Pierre Boulez chose him as the first solo pianist in ...
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