On December 31, 2022, the famous pianist Andrey Gavrilov made a presentation on Youtube called

"The Resurrection of J.S. Bach. "The Well-Tempered Clavier, Volume 1" performed by Andrey Gavrilov. Premiere."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV8rk_hjXZQ

The first 23 minutes are about the meaning of this presentation, and the actual music begins to sound from the moment 23m.07s. Gavrilov deeply rethought the traditional performance of Bach's music and came to the conclusion that Bach's music has been performed incorrectly for three hundred years since the release of the First Volume of the WTC. According to Gavrilov, Bach's music should be performed much faster (almost twice) than the traditional performance, which we hear at the tempo indicated in Bruno Mugellini's edition in the published collection. Why faster? According to Gavrilov, Bach's music sounds much more understandable for the listener at a faster pace and the more convenient it is for pianists to perform Bach's music at a pace convenient for them, the more incomprehensible and boring it is for listeners to perceive Bach's music. Here are Andrey Gavrilov's principal quotes from his annotation to the presentation:

1. "What is needed is not interpretation, but exact knowledge. You can interpret emotionally, and we all know perfectly well that knowledge is better than any interpretation, which is in some way ignorance and guessing.

2. "WTC is a scientific cycle, I would say a scientific and entertaining cycle, and this already follows from Bach's parting words to the first volume of the WTC."

3. "What is the most important and main thing: The first is the algorithms that, we set all the meanings to set the pace and give a complete character to themes and melodies, because only at certain tempos do we begin to see a face, to read his consciousness, they become very characteristic, all the melodies become easy to perceive and very original and you will see a living Bach in them as the themes become alive and begin to speak."

4. "The second important point is the development of physiological and cognitive abilities. The fact is that such a clear polyphony which is developed with transcendent skill in the execution of this cycle, it tunes not only man and his brain and the whole human being, both the listener and the performer. That is, what Bach called divine harmony, contact with God, striving for God - all this philosophy, his attitude to music, she is expressed here. ... Because overcoming enormous physiological difficulties, spiritual difficulties, mental difficulties, we find ourselves in a completely different musical cosmos, which begins to work with us as a kind of divine power. It sets us up, it entertains us, and it makes us balanced and deeper, smarter people.

5. "We shouldn't expect emotional impact from this music, this music is strictly mathematical and within the framework of this Bach geometry, his mathematicians have already laid down all the characters of the mood that he would like to put there. Using the language of divine mathematics in which God lives, you only need to reach such a level of performance that God smiles and God would be pleased ... Smooth, effortless presentation of material - this is very difficult to achieve at the speeds that Bach dictates with his algorithms.

6. "Well, the last thing I want to say: we must understand that in this gigantic work we are faced not so much even with Bach,

how much with Bach as a scientist. We must not forget that Bach was a contemporary of many other great scientists, discoverers, founders of contemporary like Newton and Leibniz, and like all serious scientists, he gave us with his musical mathematical formulas from the WTC roadmap for the development of all mankind and, as you can see, it took 300 years when its algorithms were deciphered and materialized. Of course, I still do not feel completely comfortable in this new space, it probably takes more time and I'm sure that I will be more comfortable with time, as well as you, dear listeners, will be more and more comfortable and pleasant to listen to this completely new constructive music of a learned mathematician who, with the help of his musical mathematics, creates a new virtuoso, creates a new cosmos."

7. "Well, and most importantly: now the musicians and listeners will stop interpreting, will stop being in the dark, to wander, which is very bad in any science, especially in such an exact science as "Bach's Musical Mathematical Structure", and the next generation, I am sure, will learn to feel comfortable in these new conditions.

Now about the reaction of listeners from the comments to this video: the vast majority of these comments are negative and the public literally threw Gavrilov with rotten eggs and rotten tomatoes. True, Gavrilov solemnly promised to release a disc with his "better performance" (since in his presentation on December 31, 2022 in his home office in Zurich there were many errors and even the Grand Piano keys creaked) by the end of February 2023 and by Easter it should be available. But unfortunately I have not heard anything about it now. However, the intrigue sown by Gavrilov survived. At first, I just wanted to perform the first three Preludes and Fugues from WTC I at the same tempo as Gavrilov's as creating music files from Steinway & Sons piano samples. However, there was a desire not to change "an awl for soap", but to create new speeds, even faster than those of Gavrilov for comparison. And now I propose to hear these new speeds in the form of a music file, which was created from Steinway & Sons piano samples with the help of their mathematical processing. It was painstaking manual work using "Audacity" software.

We present the first three of the WTC Volume One:

Prelude & Fugue No. 1 in C major: Duration 1/16 = 100 msec for both Prelude and Fugue.

Prelude & Fugue No. 2 in C minor: Duration 1/16 = 75 msec for Prelude and 1/16 = 100 msec for Fugue.

Prelude No. 3 in C sharp major Version 1: Duration 1/16 = 75 msec.

Prelude No. 3 in C sharp major Version 2: Duration 1/16 = 50 msec.

Here 1/16 is one sixteenth of a musical note in terms of sound duration.

Since Andrei Gavrilov positioned Bach's music as strictly Mathematical Music, there was a great desire to check "Is it really so?" However, it is up to us to judge and I hope that Andrei Gavrilov was not mistaken. I think that the first three preludes and two fugues are enough to form a primary opinion. However, I remained of the opinion that the limiting speeds should be limited by the physical capabilities of the listeners for the perception of music. In this regard, "Prelude No. 3 in C sharp major" in the First Version (Duration 1/16 = 75 msec) sounds more preferable than in the Second Version (Duration 1/16 = 50 msec).

So here is the link to listen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw5dAtb7akw