Robert Schumann, who revered Johann Sebastian Bach, recommended that young pianists should make the two books of The Well-Tempered Clavier their ‘daily bread’. The cycle is testing for the fingers, but perhaps even more so for the brain: these stylistically differentiated preludes and complex fugues must be given an overall coherence that does not diminish the singularity of their parts. Each component of The Well-Tempered Clavier can be one thing and its opposite. This is precisely what the forty-two-year old Swiss pianist Cédric Pescia demonstrates by setting out in a few moments an ‘acoustic theatre’.