Rare Performance of Bach Classic
This Sunday, audiences will have the rare opportunity to hear the entire first book of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier Book I during Bruce Murray’s 4 p.m. concert in Daniel Recital Hall on the campus of Converse College. The concert is free and open to the public.
Seldom heard in its entirety in live performance, Well-Tempered Clavier Book I consists of a prelude and fugue in each of the twelve major and twelve minor keys. "The greatest mysteries of the Well-Tempered Clavier are those of its imaginative, poetic world. The musical language of these pieces is no different from those of Bach’s sacred cantatas and Passions: With a little imagination you can hear singers, orchestral instruments and intense drama in these extraordinary miniatures."(The Globe and Mail)
Murray is artistic administrator and dean of Brevard Music Center and former director of the School of Music at the University of Alabama. He has released two compact discs on Opus One Records featuring the piano music of Frederic Goossen. He has also released two discs of chamber music with violist Doris Lederer on Centaur Records. Performance activity includes appearances as piano soloist with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Alabama Symphony (eighteen times), the Tuscaloosa Symphony (five times), the Tupelo Symphony, the Columbus (MS) Symphony, the Hendersonville (NC) Symphony, four different ensembles at the Brevard Music Center, and collegiate ensembles at Carnegie-Mellon University,, the University of Alabama, the University of Florida, Montclair State University, Centenary College and Duquesne University. Conductors have included David Effron, Louis Lane, Anshel Brusilow, Shinik Hahm, Ransom Wilson, Richard Westerfield, and Paul Polivnick. To date Murray has performed thirty-five different works with orchestra.