Dmitri Shostakovich: 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87

Two years after hearing a live performance of selections from Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, Dmitri Shostakovich completed his 24 Preludes and Fugues. Surprisingly few traversals of this masterwork exist on record, despite a whopping three by its dedicatee, Tatiana Nikolayeva. Something about Keith Jarrett’s programmatic attention to detail matches the composer’s own, resulting in an effort that belongs on the shelf of any admirer of The Köln Concert. Like an adult digging up a time capsule he buried as a child, Jarrett treats every artifact as a resurrected memory.