Keyboardist Benjamin Alard's monumental effort to record all of Johann Sebastian Bach's keyboard music in 14 volumes here reaches the sixth and includes one of the big milestones, Book I of Das wohltemperierte Clavier, BWV 846-869. Alard's series has attracted a good deal of publicity, and by the time of this release in 2022, new volumes were landing on the best-seller charts. It is easy to see why; although idiosyncratic in some ways, Alard's Well-Tempered Clavier is anything but the same old, same old. In this work, he uses a 1740 harpsichord by Hieronymus Albrecht Hass, a physically beautiful, sonically imposing instrument that he pushes to its limits. His playing is brilliant, with a Gouldian abandon. Consider one of the famous pieces, like the opening Prelude in C major, BWV 846, to understand what all the fuss is about. The sound engineering certainly qualifies as an idiosyncrasy. No location is specified other than the town of Provins in north central France, but the engineers mike Alard close up and capture all the clanking of the harpsichord's workings. It has the intensity he is seeking, but it could have been toned down a bit. Another unusual feature of this volume is the inclusion of the rarely played Clavier-Büchlein vor Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (the odd "vor" term is Bach's), performed on a clavichord. These were short pieces written for Bach's ten-year-old son Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, who seems to have written some of them himself. Leading off the three-volume program with these may seem, too, to be an idiosyncrasy, but Alard seems to be trying to capture the degree to which the Well-Tempered Clavier crystallized a group of inchoate streams into a profound musical monument, an idea that is expanded upon in the booklet. One may or may not buy this idea, but again, Alard is nothing if not bold, and that is very exciting. The whole thing has to be experienced for oneself.