The fugue was considered the intellectual peak of musical composition for many centuries, and Bach was its greatest champion. As Yamaha Artist Evan Shinners states, Bach used this first Fugue of the Well-Tempered Clavier to lay down the law, then break the law, and demonstrate to composers, performers, and listeners the endless creative possibilities within the parameters of strict counterpoint.

Shinners begins by defining "fugue" according to its Latin root "fuga," meaning "flying." What is flying? Interweaving voices. Shinners tracks each time the subject, or "theme," enters in one of the four voices of the fugue, and explains some of the special compositional tools Bach employs, such as stretto and the golden ratio.

Fugues are tricky to learn, and require careful slow practice, hands separately, until you can feel the voices emerge independently in your hands. Shinners recommends adhering to historically-informed performance practice principles, especially in ornamentation, and offers practice strategies for developing quick, articulate mordants. He then breaks down particularly challenging passages and shows how to carefully pass a voice between the hands.

One of the most recognizable piano works ever written, Bach's C Major Prelude BWV 846 is also one of the most misunderstood. Yamaha Artist and Bach guru Evan Shinners re-introduces you to the work in its historical context as an etude for your ears.

Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier was not only a database of compositional techniques and an exhibition of creative ingenuity, it was a treatise on composing in every key. Modern "equal temperament" was but one of many "well-tempered" systems allowing for limitless transposition, and not Bach's preferred tuning scheme in his 48 Preludes and Fugues. Shinners discusses how each key still had subtly different proportions and characters, and the first Prelude is Bach's appeal to open your ears and absorb the myriad relations between minor and major thirds.

Listeing to the intonation of your instrument will directly inform your interpretation – your choice of tempo and your decision to use pedal. Meanwhile, "clavier" was a collective noun in German that referred to a number of keyboard instruments, and considering which instrument Bach had in mind for the Prelude. As the work unfolds, Bach compresses a phrase in a manner that sharpens the suspenseful harmonic development, a fact lost on square 19th-century editors.

Shinners then addresses the physical experience of performing the work – how to practice the more awkward figures, determine fingerings, and allow the natural shape of your hand to roll through each broken chord like the spokes of a bicycle wheel.