Bach's magnum opus, The Well-Tempered Clavier, is, for keyboard artists, a daunting master-piece exploiting the very limits of the instrument and those who brave its challenges. The young Russian pianist Konstantin Lifschitz has made Bach a specialty in his programming and his performances of the complete Well-Tempered Clavier - played from memory - in New York and Miami have elicited superlatives from the critics.
In an interesting variation in performance practice, Konstantin Lifschitz combines the two books of the Well-Tempered Clavier by following each prelude and fugue from Book I with the corresponding prelude and fugue from Book II, thus keeping the key signatures together and creating a steady progression through the scale to the end of the series.