Some of the canonic musical forms are determinative—they give you a structure, or at least the implied expectation of a structure, some pregaming of how the piece may actually go—such as Symphony, Concerto, the dance forms contained within partitas and suites, and, the most architectural of all, the fugue (elaboration on subjects, countersubjects, episodes, strettoes, and that is for other pens), a set of carefully managed musical pathways. Yet there are more whimsical notions, like prelude, fantasy, or elsewhere, nocturne, are just mood- or emotion- or vibe-prescriptive. And while nobody listens to a form qua a form, Bach makes hay of these expectation buckets to serve up energetic, beautiful fare full of wonders, thrilling complexities, frustrated and fulfilled expectations. Yes there is form, yes there is brilliance, but more—and more meaningfully—there is dash, won-der, and emotive joy. Take for example the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, which begins with a flight and ends with a compositional journey through a delightfully rag-ged version of one if these prescriptive forms. Especially maddening for the annotator (or proper scholar) is that little actual information about its composition—or even the original manuscript—is available. Some sixteen versions of the original exist, process only slightly known, which to the skilled interpreter, it is a kind of freedom. Rather than being beholden to the Fount, personal stamps can be applied. It worked for Bach, an astonishing improvisor, who may have felt little obligation to his own scrawled notes. All we can do is wonder. And therefore it does not matter which one is “right”; more important is the unabashed spirit of the piece, a daemonic flight built on a chromatic (i.e. not just a major or minor scale) melody which gives way to a staunch fugal melody, also chromatic, gleefully elaborated by composer and performer alike. This is a piece for showoffs—Liszt and Brahms, famously theatrical, to name just two who used it thus—because it requires visible technique. And it is a showoff-y piece because fugues, due to their storied rigorousness, are not only perilous to play but damn hard to write. And while virtuosity can occasionally be its own reward, here the material engrosses: wicked arpeggios give way to breathy aria, which then combine; this gives way to fugue, which then, influenced per-haps by the garrulousness of the opening, moves into wilder and wilder territory, outpacing the roadmap but working the power of the path. Nobody ever danced to any of Bach’s dance suites such as the Par-tita No. 5 in G Major. Instead, as was custom, composers would take these popular forms of continental dances and gin them up into concert works—think Chopin’s Waltzes or Brahms’ Hungarian Dances, a kind of street-meets-palace move. Suites such as these are built on both a set of game rules drawn from a deliciously cosmopolitan provenance: Ac-ronymic-ally the form is ACSOG (which stands for Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, OPTIONAL and Gigue)—but in this one there are hidden surprises tucked into the folds of the pre-postmodern rigor. The piece commences with a jaunty Prelude (the “Preamblum”), after which the customary courtly Allemande (German), after which a demonic Courante (French), a dignified Sarabande (Spanish), the Tempo di Minuetto (French again). An additional movement happens here, the “Passepied” (a French court dance), after which the joyous final Gigue (English). It is a curious notion to write a concerto for a solo instrument—as concerti are always (or, clearly, almost always) the pitting of soloist against ensemble. Here, in the Italian Concerto Bach, puckishly, both does and does not adhere. The thrill to be encountered in this piece is where the composer is asking the pianist (well, Harpsichordist) to portray orchestra (the tutti) and the individual (solo). What is evident from this robust collection of pieces—as expertly played by Mellissa Marse, who takes and holds the stage in every instance—is not just the arithmetic clarity of Bach but more how much fun and liberty we feel him taking. It is easy to put this composer on a pedestal—the pouty philosopher Emily Cioran took effusiveness up to eleven saying, famously: “Bach’s music is the only argument proving the creation of the Universe cannot be regarded as a complete failure. Without Bach, God would be a complete second-rate figure.”—and yet to do so is to deprive the work of its secret power, its brio, its exuberance, its messy clever-ness within consistent forms. So enjoy—It is what the work is there for. Daniel Felsenfeld