The Well-TAMPERED Clavier with pianists Ralitza Patcheva and Sam Post

From their website: In the Baroque era, improvising, ornamenting, and reshaping a composer’s original work was standard practice—much like jazz musicians do today. Post and Patcheva lean into that legacy, freely applying rhythmic variation without feeling constrained by the printed page.

“Rhythm was barely mentioned in my college fugue-writing course,” says Post. “On my shelf, two well-regarded books about Bach contain thirty index entries on harmony—and only one on rhythm.” By shifting individual notes forward or backward in time, Post discovered “endless possibilities” that play to the strengths of the piano.

Patcheva, a fellow Levine Music faculty member, immediately recognized the freshness of Post’s approach. “When I returned to Bach’s original after playing the Well-‘Tampered’ version, I noticed spatial relationships between the notes I’d never considered before.”