In 2006 both Barenboim and Ashkenazy caused a sensation with their releases around Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier; music that is now far removed from the piano desk after the cleaning rage of the reborn harpsichord guild. About Ashkenazy's Well-Tempered Clavier, The Penguin Guide to Classical Music wrote: 'The result is an extraordinary tour de force in the variety of its pianism. Ashkenazy obviously
… prepared well and he thought deeply about every prelude and every fugue as an individual entity… 'Ashkenazy continues his Bach explorations with the six Partitas by Clavier-Übung I. He is a pianist who can be fierce and sharp at times. All the more striking is the poetry that Ashkenazy puts in the Preludium and the Sarabande of Partita No. 1. (HJ)more