Irish keyboard player Malcolm Proud, one of the world's leading performers of the harpsichord, presents a recording of one of J S Bach’s major works, the Six Partitas BWV 825-830 - full of passion and poetry but also fantastically virtuosic. Although modestly titled Clavier Übung (Keyboard Practice), the six Partitas, consisting of Preludes, Allemandes, Courantes, Sarabandes, Gigues, Menuets, and other galanteries offered by their composer "to music lovers as refreshment of their spirits", are works of astonishing richness and complexity.

The cycle, which in 1731 was the first group of works to be published by Bach himself, represents a unique stylistic synthesis of the suite form with a particular emphasis on most varied and imaginative opening movements. In his 1802 biography of Bach, Nikolaus Forkel famously wrote that “such splendid compositions for the clavier had not been seen or heard before… so brilliant, harmonious, expressive and constantly novel are they”.

Born in Dublin, Malcolm Proud studied with Gustav Leonhardt in Amsterdam and won first prize at the Edinburgh International Harpsichord Competition in 1982. Since then, he has established an international career as an organist and harpsichordist, performing with such groups as the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the English Baroque Soloists, the Gabrieli Consort and the Academy of Ancient Music, and touring throughout Europe, North America and Japan. He is a member of the Irish Baroque Orchestra and a founder member of Camerata Kilkenny.