Contrapunctus 1
Contrapunctus 2
Contrapunctus 3
Contrapunctus 4
Canon In Hypodiapason (Canon Alla Ottava)
Contrapunctus 5
Contrapunctus 6 Per Diminutionem In Stylo Francese
Contrapunctus 7 Per Augmentationem Et Diminutionem
Canon Alla Duodecima In Contrapunto Alla Quinta
Contrapunctus 8
Contrapunctus 9 Alla Duodecima
Contrapunctus 10 Alla Decima
Contrapunctus 11
Canon In Hypodiatessaron?per Augmentationem In Contrario Motu
Canon Alla Decima (Contrapunto Alla Terza)
Contrapunctus 13 (Rectus)
Contrapunctus 13 (Inversus)
Contrapunctus 12 (Rectus)
Contrapunctus 12 (Inversus)

The greatest Bach player of her generation, Russian pianist Tatyana Nikolayeva delivered this incredible live performance just a few months before her death. This recording is published for the first time on FHR, with the kind permission of the Tatyana Nikolayeva estate. This is one of the last recordings of Nikolayeva (1993).

Although The Art of Fugue work was long thought to have been written on Bach's deathbed, recent research has shown that he was working on it during the early 1740s. The autograph from this time comprises fourteen movements (twelve fugues and two canons), but at the end of his life Bach revised the unpublished work adding two fugues and two canons. Engraving of the plates for publication began during the last months of Bach's life and he was able to proof read some of them albeit with failing eyesight. However, when the work was published at the end of 1751 Bach was already dead and the last fugue left incomplete.

In creating his The Art of Fugue Bach proved that he was master of the form but in the hands of a musically intuitive interpreter such as Tatyana Nikolayeva it becomes one of the masterpieces of a world genius.

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The 1993 Sibelius Academy Recital, Helsinki