As my family’s legend goes, when I cried incessantly at three days old, my mother played the Well-Tempered Clavier by Johann Sebastian Bach, and I immediately stopped crying. The Well-Tempered Clavier was the first piece of music I ever heard, and I must have immediately loved it. Through my childhood, I would hum the Prelude melodies and Fugue subjects with little awareness of the pieces. Countless drives to Los Angeles would start with the Prelude and Fugue No. 1 in C Major BWV 846, with higher keys and numbers following us as we drove down the coastline.

One of my defining memories is the first time I competed in the Southern California Junior Bach Festival regional competition when I was in third grade. I played the Prelude No. 1 in C Major from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1, the most entry-level piece from the Well-Tempered Clavier. The competition took place in a grand church in Ventura. On the drive down, I built up nervousness in anticipation of playing in an unfamiliar place. Upon arrival, I entered the church and heard a seventeen-year-old playing a complicated piece dramatically and flawlessly on the beautiful Bösendorfer 225 piano. At the start of my session, I heard a few students performing much more advanced works of Bach, and then it was my turn to play. As I recall, I played fairly well, but what has impacted me most was the sense of awe and inspiration I felt from hearing the other students play. I was inspired on that day to keep with piano, and to reach that goal of playing at a higher level.

Obviously, the Well Tempered Clavier is extremely special to me, probably the collection of pieces that I love the most. Because it consists of 24 complicated preludes and fugues and lasts almost two hours, however, it is rarely performed live. Thus, when I heard that one of my favorite pianists, Angela Hewitt, was performing this piece on the 26th of January in London (my favorite city), I begged my mother to take me to see this concert, and let me skip school for a week. After a substantial struggle, my mother was convinced. We booked tickets the moment that the concert went on sale, and committed to this arduous journey for the momentous concert.

The concert day came very quickly, and my mom and I took the Underground to Oxford Circus and walked to Wigmore Hall. Wigmore Hall is a very intimate concert venue where I had previously seen baroque orchestra The King’s Consort. At the start of the concert, a man came out and informed us that Angela Hewitt had broken her foot. At this moment, I became extremely nervous. Had we traveled 5000 miles for nothing? Fortunately, he immediately reassured us that Angela Hewitt would, in fact, be playing. At that moment, the audience had a collective sigh of relief. Angela Hewitt was then wheeled onto the stage, sat down at the Fazioli piano, and began to play.

Each of the pieces of the Well-Tempered Clavier consists of a Prelude and a Fugue. The preludes are typically short and simple pieces that serve as introductions to the fugues. The fugues, my favorite type of music, are polyphonic pieces dominated by a single theme, called the subject. The subject is played alone at the beginning and then is joined by itself transposed up or down. More voices enter, and the piece builds in complexity. One can hear the original subject dancing through the voices. In an effort to celebrate the development of even-tempered tuning, J.S. Bach wrote these twenty-four preludes and fugues, chromatically ascending through all of the 24 major and minor keys.

The whole concert went by in a blur. Hewitt played all 24 preludes and fugues marvelously, and several moments stand out to me in particular. The Fugue in C-Sharp Minor is a slow fugue with five voices, meaning that it is incredibly dense. The way that Angela Hewitt built up to the climax, where the subject enters at the lowest point of the fugue in measure 73, sent chills running down my spine. Hewitt played my favorite prelude in the entire Well-Tempered Clavier, the Prelude in E-Flat Major, with such diversity of timbres that gave me intense bliss. The Fugue in A Major felt delightfully crisp and modern, and Hewitt played with wonderful articulation. As Angela Hewitt climbed up the Major and Minor keys, I felt a new love of this collection of pieces, and a growing sensation of sadness as the concert drew to a close. After the glorious concert ended, I was hit with the brisk air of London, and had returned to reality.

The live concert is the pinnacle of listening to music, and this concert proves this to me. Although the playing at a live concert may have more defects than the playing in recordings, these humanize the music and make the experience of a listener truly unique. A recording may approach perfection, but the live experience gives the playing authenticity. Angela Hewitt’s broken foot exemplifies this perfectly. While this misfortune is objectively negative, it illustrates that live concerts derive value not in spite of their imperfections, but because of them.