21 Tips to Consider When Playing Bach

1. Listen to as many professional recordings as you can find to teach yourself what Bach normally sounds like, but don’t feel like you ever have to copy any one recording’s style. 
2. Know at least the basics of how chords work to understand the framework of what is written.
3. Know what ornaments are, how they work, and when/where to play them. 
4. Ornaments almost always aren’t written in Bach’s music; his contemporaries just knew when to add them, and in what style.
5. Always study a piece simply by listening and reading along for a week before beginning to actually play it. 
6. Experiment with phrasing, and don’t be afraid to go against what the printed edition says. 
7. All of Bach’s music is either meant to be sung (even the compositions that don’t feature choruses) or danced to. 
8. If you play something more than once, vary its character slightly each time. 
9. Be expressive, but don’t use vibrato. 
10. He didn’t write many dynamic markings, but varying volume is essential in every performance 
11. Every musical idea either originated from a preceding idea or leads to a following one.
12.  Repeated runs of the same note should always either crescendo progressively or decrescendo progressively depending on context. 
13. Articulate clearly because you should either imagine yourself as a good singer who enunciates or as a skilled dancer whose movements are clearly linked but distinct 
14. Bach didn’t mark much in his music, but nothing original to the manuscripts is superfluous
15. Always compare multiple contemporary sources against your printed copy. You may find some interesting differences, however minute they may be. 
16. When playing Bach in a concert, warm up for at least half an hour before you start your performance. 
17. Remember that Bach’s instruments weren’t as powerful as ours, and that his halls had much more natural reverb when considering fingering or bowing choices. 
18. Be free and slightly alter the tempo when appropriate, but maintain control, taking the utmost care not to rush or drag to an irrecoverable degree. 
19. Because you don’t have vibrato as an expressive tool, move freely with the music, but don’t force any unnatural movements. 
20. It’s perfectly fine, and, in fact, guaranteed, that no two performances of some Bach repertoire, even by the same person on the same day, will ever be exactly the same. 
21. Playing Bach should never be a chore; Bach should always be fun!