'Toccata' is one of the earliest names for a keyboard piece, meaning simply 'touched', it is a tactile display of dexterity and delicacy.  By 1700, printing and publishing had established a demand for secular instrumental music of a lighter nature: a shapely tune with a firm bass, various dance forms, recitative styles imitating the inflexions of speech.  The clavier toccata assembled such disparate material together with fugal movements into a multi-sectional whole, more improvisatory than the suite.  Along with praeludiums and fantasias, toccatas also served as free-form introductions to compositions in strict form, as in the famous D minor Toccata and Fugue for organ.

Bach's early seven keyboard toccatas date from around 1710 while he was organist at Arnstadt and Mullhausen.  They display diverse moods, rhythms and textures and include many trills and tremolandos.  The slow movements are free and rhapsodic in character and the fugues are less strict than his 48 Preludes and Fugues.

The D major Toccata was revised extensively and remained popular for over a century; the latest known version is being played here.  A brisk introduction opens into a lively, strutting Allegro with motives alternating between treble and bass and an exhilarating close.  A reflective, recitative-like Adagio follows with distinct solo voicing, leading directly into a passionate double fugue of exquisite beauty: a foretaste of maturing genius.  A second adagio Con discretione builds up dramatically to a sprightly gigue-fugue that demonstrates Bach's extraordinary gift for contrapuntal humour.  Its brilliant climax towards the end balances the bravura of the introduction before the pace abruptly slackens to an assertive close.  Together with other youthful experiments, this Toccata reveals an almost romantic touch that was to become all too rare in later works from Bach's prolific output.

Bach's preference for the clavichord rather than the harpsichord for intimate works of this kind makes it ideally suited to the modern piano.  With early keyboard instruments the careful choice of fingering and timing was key to communicating the musical intent.  However on the more resonant piano, with tonal dynamics and light pedalling, colouration is arguably stronger while adhering to the highly articulated playing practice of the period.  In any event, matters of tempi and ornamentation have always been generally left to the performer's discretion.
 

Mendelssohn studied and greatly admired the music of Bach and did much to revive public interest in Baroque music, conducting the St. Matthew Passion in 1829 and establishing a series of historical concerts later in Leipzig.  Like Bach, he was a great performer and improviser at the keyboard.  His Romantic colouring built upon a Classical style and he followed Mozart and Beethoven in incorporating fugal material into several of his own works.  However his fugues are not strict and they are written specifically for the piano, with which Mendelssohn had complete familiarity.  His melodies are always smooth and flowing, elegant and harmonious, with a particular fondness for dominant and diminished fifth intervals and arpeggios.

Mendelssohn's set of six Preludes and Fugues demonstrates his mastery of counterpoint writing, as attested by Schumann who thought very highly of them.  They were composed in 1827-37, each fugue before its prelude, and like Bach's 48 the couplings bear no thematic relationship.

The F minor pair contrasts vividly.  The prelude's expressive melody sings out against quietly pulsating chords, at times descending into and below the accompaniment; this is the Mendelssohn of the Songs Without Words.  The fugue is remarkably cheerful for a minor key; this is the Mendelssohn of the scherzo, playing with the material in a variety of ways, particularly by inversion and shortening.  A charming countersubject motif may have its origins in the opening Allegro of Beethoven's Op. 7 piano sonata.
 

The emotional excesses of Romanticism eventually provoked reaction in the form of a fresh look at aspects of rhythm, texture and tonality, notably by Debussy, Bartók, Schoenberg and Stravinsky.  Ravel's unique originality drew instead upon traditional harmonies and forms expressed with novel, virtuosic transparency.

The Sonatine was one of Ravel's earliest works of original significance.  It was inspired by a competition in a periodical for a piano sonatina opening movement not exceeding 75 bars.  In the event Ravel's was the only entry, two bars too long, and the competition was cancelled.  However he furnished two further movements and published the complete work in 1905.  It impressed his publishers and demonstrated a new clarity and lyricism in piano writing.

In texture, the influence of Liszt is apparent in the rippling inner detail and especially the descending fourth intervals with which the work opens and abounds, a pleading motif throughout, giving the piece a cyclical character.  Ravel's scoring, here as always, teems with meticulous detail.  The Modéré begins expressively with the theme in parallel octaves.  Dynamic and tempo changes heighten the passion and use is made of the subdued tonal effect of the soft pedal.  In the Mouvement de menuet, rising fifth intervals and, in the bass, poignant sevenths instil a sweeter calmness.  It incorporates harp-like effects, syncopation and a broad, pavane-like ending.  The turbulent Animé; again exhibits rising intervals but now very close together, like horn calls.  It is in marked contrast to the highly expressive themes elsewhere, concluding with a spirited redressing of the falling fourth motif with defiant assurance.
 

Prokofiev had genuine admiration for Ravel and was dubbed the 'Mendelssohn with false notes' in New York.  In common with those composers he had an extraordinary reserve of good tunes, but also an inherent ability to set them with economical purity.  His approach to composition was primarily melodic: short, simple, repeated tunes, often diatonic, ranging from the satirical to the nostalgic.

The Visions Fugitives, or 'Fleeting Visions', date from 1915-17 during the first phase of Prokofiev's musical career, between his experimental and shocking Sarcasms for piano and his self-imposed exile from the turmoil and distraction of the Russian Revolution.  The Russian title Mimoletnosti, translated 'things flying past', was inspired by a line in I do not know wisdom by the poet Konstantin Balmont.  The cycle consists of twenty diverse miniatures, all under two minutes, reflecting ideas, moods and events whilst displaying Prokofiev's equally diverse kaleidoscope of pianistic effects.  In his book Piano Notes, pianist-historian Charles Rosen considers the collection to be one of the most remarkable in terms of a new and original style of pianism, namely the combination of percussive dry attacks blended with delicate lyricism.

Commodo is nostalgic, with a lilting swing, like the haunting Tales of an Old Grandmother for piano that followed the Visions in 1918.  Feroce is fiercely angry with pointed rhythms yet exposes a characteristic lyricism within.  Prokofiev's 1941 autobiography describes Presto agitatissimo e molto accentuato as reflecting the frenzy of the crowds during the February Revolution.  Finally, Lento irrealmente closes the set with a wispy fade into oblivion.
 

John Ogdon was a composer-pianist like Prokofiev and Mendelssohn but sadly little of his prolific output has been published, including the commendable 25 Preludes with their curious titles and dedications.

The preludes cycle through all keys in major-minor order, like Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, returning to C major for an epilogue.  They were composed in 1984-85 and 'Dedicated with sincere gratitude to John Paul Getty for the gift of a Steinway grand piano.  Prelude No. 9 is in memory of Claude Biggs, 'an extraordinary teacher of Bach' at the then Royal Manchester College of Music.  It is a modern take on counterpoint with obvious ties to Bachian practices: frequent modulation, clear cadences (musical punctuation), a firm bass line.  Its sombre appeal is again the falling fourth interval but here resolving down to a fifth.  It is a poignant piece and profoundly moving.