The booklet note to Schiff’s latest early keyboard venture with ECM offers factual and circumstantial arguments for Bach having a preference for the modest clavichord, which by the time of The Well-Tempered Clavier had gone through some important technical improvements, the new unfretted instrument allowing the performer to play in all major and minor keys and to achieve a variety of articulations. All this is fascinating, but the real case for the suitability of clavichord is Schiff’s own performances of a programme that explores the range of its possibilities, using a 2003 replica of a 1743 Specken instrument.

The lower tuning (roughly a semitone) makes it, for me, ideal for the intimate storytelling of the sublime Capriccio sopra la lontananza del suo fratello dilettissimo. At the other extreme the instrument is resourceful and responsive enough to cope with the dazzling exuberance of the Chromatic Fantasia and offering pristine transparency to the knottier textures of the Fugue.

The didactic Duets, Inventions and Sinfonias are more commonly associated with the domestic nature of the clavichord. A few exceptions apart, especially in the Sinfonias, Schiff’s tempos are very much consistent with his 1983 recording on modern piano (Philips, 9/85). The melancholic E flat major and the intensely contemplative F minor Sinfonias are somehow more compact on the clavichord, whereas the effervescent B minor takes on a more mellow hue.

But that’s where the comparisons end. This is not just a pianist changing medium and still sounding like a pianist (an example of that would be Gulda’s remastered mono recording of the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue on clavichord – Berlin Classics, 9/18). As with his previous period-instrument ventures, Schiff opens up a new world and thoroughly adjusts his temperament, his ‘pianism’ and his artistry to it. If on the modern piano he brings Bach to us in all his reflectiveness and majesty, on the clavichord he invites the audience as it were to eavesdrop on Bach himself, as if sitting in the same room, or ‘a quiet oasis’, as Schiff puts it in his notes. My only complaint would be that he makes it hard for me to go back to hearing these works on the modern piano, or least on the piano with any other player.