The Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (the original spelling: Clavier-Büchlein vor Wilhelm Friedemann Bach) is a collection of keyboard music compiled by Johann Sebastian Bach for his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann, who went on to become one of Europe's greatest improvising composers. The book has a clear didactic purpose. Most of the pieces included are better known as parts of The Well-Tempered Clavier and the Inventions and Sinfonias. The pieces in the collection are sequenced by complexity, beginning with the simplest works. The works are for “Keyboard” so they may be played on any instrument of the time: organ, harpsichord, spinet, or clavichord. Bach, however, considered the clavichord the best instrument for personal use, because it is able to express most adequately the cantabile way of playing.
Played on the clavichord by Yuan Sheng, “China’s premier interpreter of Bach” (International Piano Magazine) and a pupil of Solomon Mikowsky and Rosalyn Tureck, Yuan Sheng extensively studied the performance practice of Baroque music. Equally at home at the piano as at the harpsichord, he has an instinctive feeling for the possibilities, sonorities, and touch of the instrument at hand, so that “the listener might easily have imagined the composer at the keyboard” (Boston Intelligencer).
