You are invited to a birthday party! 21 March sees the 330th Johann Sebastian Bach birth anniversary. Nowadays seen as a peerless phenomenon, during his lifetime he was a hard-working organist, choirmaster and teacher, toiling to support his large family (20 children).  Aware of his own talent, he resolved to realize it primarily in sacred music, giving up any thought of spectacular career. He never wrote an opera, although in his time this genre was a real bonanza. Yet he gave us quite a lot of secular music, nowadays the highlights of keyboard repertoire, cellists’ favourites and a material for violinists’ virtuosic exploits.

And for what instrument did Bach write the Kunst der Fuge? We do not know – it is quite likely that for none and every. The cycle is a kind of treatise on music theory written with notes; a  sound experiment, halting abruptly when the notes form his last name B(B flat)-A-C-H(B). Published after his death, the Kunst der Fuge sold only a few copies and the composer’s embittered son sold the copper plates with the work engraved on them at a scrap-metal price. Nowadays the Kunst der Fuge is universally recognised as a work of genius.  Bach’s masterpiece will be played by the Wrocław Baroque Orchestra under the baton of Andrzej Kosendiak.