Pianist Angela Hewitt nailed it when she wrote of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (BWV846-893), or 48 Preludes and Fugues, or simply the “48”: “It is an inexhaustible treasure trove of the greatest possible music, combining contrapuntal wizardry with (Bach’s) immense gift for expressing human emotion in all its forms. Bach amazes us by absolutely never running out of steam. In The Well-Tempered Clavier, we find a piece to suit every mood and every occasion.”

Yet harpsichordist Trevor Pinnock disarmingly claims in one of his wonderful My Baroque videoblogs on YouTube that: “…it’s always been something that I’ve put off (recording) because I never felt that I had the depth of knowledge of Bach to really take on such a vast thing. But at a certain point in your life you have to make the decision. Either you’re going to do it or not do it. So now is the time.”

The 73-year-old doyen of the period performance world highlights the music’s challenging intellectual aspects. But as Hewitt indicates, that’s only half the story, and Bach’s “immense gift for expressing emotion in all its forms” is present in almost every bar. Which is something Pinnock grasps both...