C.P.E Bach's 'Zweyte Fortsetzung' Sonatas are a sequel to his famous Sonatas with Varied Reprises (1760). Of the six 'Fortsetzung' Sonatas, the first three appear here. The pre-sequel set had proven successful, possibly because it included written-out ‘improvisations’ for repeated sections - a feature, oddly, more or less absent from its two sequels. However, an alternative version exists of the first movement of Sonata No.3, which Miklós Spányi includes here, together with two unrelated 1760s sonatas. The second sequel also includes two stylistically contrasting 1740s era sonatas.
J. C. Bach: Keyboard Sonatas Op. 5 / Susan Alexander-max
Naxos
CD
$19.99Mar 29, 2011
These are light, charming pieces. Only one, the sixth and last, spends any time in minor keys, and three of the sonatas consist of two movements each. That said, there are more than a few fully worked out movements, structurally speaking, and the music seems ideally suited to the intimate timbre of the clavichord (sort of like a harpsichord without the sharp “twang”). Susan Alexander-Max plays very well indeed, ornamenting the music liberally but never excessively, and stroking the keys with the kind of sensitivity that produces numerous instances of those dynamic subtleties that made this instrument so popular, despite its evident limitations. She is also very attractively recorded, with an absolute minimum of mechanical noise (some clavichord recordings feature more clicking and squeaking than musical tone). Definitely worth investigating.
-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com
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The decision by Naxos to record the six op. 5 sonatas of Johann Christian Bach on the clavichord is a brave one. Even more so than the harpsichord, the clavichord is likely to polarise listeners. In modern parlance its tone might be characterised as 'in-your-face' - neon strip-lighting against the natural daylight of a grand piano.
But one thing the soft action of the clavichord does ensure is a sense of intimacy, which is apt for these almost sensual sonatas. Recording quality here is generally good, despite the fact that the very nature of the mechanics of the clavichord makes its sound rather elusive. Probably for that reason it has been recorded quite closely. At least the church setting coaxes as much resonance out of the instrument as it is willing to give.
Background noise is minimal, except, strangely, in the final Sonata, where there is something very odd going on 'underneath' the recording, as it were. It’s a kind of eerily distorted feedback giving the impression of a neighbour's turned-up television set heard through a wall! Once noticed it is quite distracting, and frankly the producer needs to answer some questions.
Bach published these works in 1766 as Six Sonatas for the Harpsichord or the Fortepiano, Op. 5. These were the very first pieces published in London for the newly emergent piano, and Bach is also credited with the first piano recital in public. According to Susan Alexander-Max's liner-notes, dynamic markings, such as frequent piano and forte, indicate a distinct leaning towards the latter instrument of Bach's title. By this time he was already adopting the new square piano by manufacturers Zumpe as his keyboard instrument of preference. Pianists of the period would nevertheless still often have used a clavichord in the home for composition and practice. That is Alexander-Max's justification for performing these works on the clavichord, a 2006 model based on a 1785 instrument.
Mozart greatly admired Bach's music, and his own early works are clearly influenced by it. In fact, the young Mozart was so taken with Bach's op. 5 that he recomposed nos. 2, 3 and 4 into an early piano concerto, KV.107. The works are generally in three movements, though nos. 1 and 4 are in an old-school two. By this time Bach was well into his cosmopolitan galant period, as these elegant, nuanced works can testify. The opening theme of Sonata no.6 bears a brief but striking resemblance to the famous Russian folksong, "Dark Eyes". By the end of the movement it has morphed into a melancholy Neapolitan-like song of love lost. By this time the bizarre background noise is all too evident.
Alexander-Max's technique is superb on this unforgiving instrument, and she extracts considerable expressiveness from it in the service of Bach's suave, sophisticated music. 74 minutes is a long time to spend listening without a break to the clavichord. In smaller sessions of, say, two sonatas a go, the unique sonorities of this instrument, coupled with the brilliance and imagination of Bach's music, make this an almost irresistible bargain - were it not for the recording quality lapse.
We know relatively little about Froberger. His many journeys point to a restless spirit, to boundless curiosity and a desire for personal development. At the age of 18, Johannes Maria Bogner was led to the harpsichord, where he first encountered the works of Froberger and he was captivated by them. After he changed to playing the clavichord, he came back to the composer's works. On this recording he presents them in all the intimacy and agitation that the clavichord is capable of realizing.
C.P.E. Bach: Solo Keyboard Music Vol 20 / Miklos Spanyi
BIS
CD
$21.99Apr 01, 2010
In these five sonatas from the 1760s, the period prior to C.P.E. Bach's departure from Frederick the Great's court in Berlin, we find some of his most attractive writing, in the opinion of Darrell M. Berg, author of the liner notes to this disc and general editor of the complete edition of the composer's works. The fabulous landscapes and high drama of so many earlier works (such as the Württemberg Sonatas on volumes 16 and 17 of this series) are left behind, as are the lyrical intimacy and simplicity of the so-called 'easy' sonatas. Or rather: these qualities are incorporated in the 'new' style and a certain synthesis is achieved. The result is a style featuring Bach's familiar energy and vivacity but with greater equilibrium, resulting in compositions we might - for want of a better term - call more 'classical'. Miklós Spányi has acquired a reputation as a leading interpreter and firm advocate of this music that stands between the Baroque and the Classical period, and which is less well-known than it deserves partly because of the difficulty of classifying it. He has here chosen to perform it on C.P.E. Bach's own favourite keyboard instrument, the clavichord. Spányi's ground-breaking work in this series, and in the parallel one of the same composer's keyboard concertos, will be familiar to many lovers of early keyboard music. It has been called 'a major contribution to recorded keyboard literature' in American Record Guide, to single out one single disc, Volume 17 of this series was selected as Editor's Choice in Gramophone, and described as 'the answer to clavichord fans' dreams'.
C. P. E. Bach: Solo Keyboard Music Vol 29 / Spanyi
BIS
CD
$21.99Mar 10, 2015
With this disc, Miklós Spányi completes C.P.E. Bach's set of ‘Zweyte Fortsetzung’ Sonatas, in itself a continuation of two previous sets (Wq 50 and 51). The composer himself clearly regarded the 18 sonatas of these sets as a major achievement. All of them are substantial works but the three included here might be considered the most diverse and original of the entire series. Bach assembled the Wq 52 set for publication in 1763 but Sonata No.4 had in fact been composed twenty years earlier, while No.5 and No.6 are of a later date. Together the three works exhibit Bach’s inexhaustible technique of varying melodies and textures, but they also display new structures and harmonic adventures. Following them on this disc are two of C.P.E. Bach's last compositions in the sonata genre, composed after he had left his post at the court of Frederick the Great in Berlin to take up that of Director of Music in Hamburg. Although Bach at this time more and more often performed on the fortepiano, he still favoured the clavichord, and as late as 1786, when the Sonata in C minor, Wq 65/49 was completed, he specified the use of the clavichord vibrato known as Bebung in the manuscript score. Throughout this series, Miklós Spányi has often opted for a clavichord – a copy of a rather late eighteenth-century instrument, built in the Silbermann tradition reaching back to some fifty years earlier. This choice has endeared him to many clavichord lovers, including the reviewer in BBC Music Magazine who about an earlier volume wrote: 'Spányi's ultra-sensitive touch adds magic on this delicate instrument. Gentle tonal subtlety provides rich rewards.'
In the light of his later music, it is by no means difficult to imagine Domenico Scarlatti strolling under the Moorish arcades of the Alcazar or listening at night in the streets of Seville to the intoxicating rhythms of castanets and the half oriental melodies of Andalusian chant. To them Saracen of his Sicilian ancestry and Neapolitan childhood must have responded. (Ralph Kirkpatrick, Domenico Scarlatti)
Hardly any other keyboard instrument is as multi-faceted in it's expression and affect as the clavichord. The extremely simple, direct action allows for the finest nuances - even vibrato is possible. Lea Suter showcases these unique capabilities, demonstrating the wealth of inspiration in such well-known works as Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, Partita in E Minor and even the grandiose Chaconne in D Minor.
Flores de Musica pera o instrumento de tecla & harpa is the only known work of Portuguese composer Manuel Rodrigues Coelho. Printed in Lisbon in 1620 and boasting more than five hundred pages, Coelho's Flores de Musica is one of the largest music works printed in the seventeenth century. Celebrating the 400th anniversary of it's original publication, a new edition in three volumes has been published with the research being used to inform this major new recording series. Harpist and soprano Maria Bayley and clavichordist Marco Orsini-Brescia lend their artistry to this latest chapter in an ambitious recording project.
With this recording, volume 42 of the complete music for solo keyboard by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Miklos Spanyi continues his exploration of transcriptions of concertos originally written for keyboard and orchestra, to which he adds some movements from early versions of sonatas (the standard versions of which appear on earlier volumes in this series). Four of the six concertos from the Wq 43 collection are featured here (the remaining two appear on the previous volume, BIS-2397). When Bach published this set of six concertos for keyboard and orchestra in 1772, he also prepared a version for solo keyboard intended for moderately advanced amateurs who could then play them at home, without orchestra, thus opening up a much larger market. A smart move by the shrewd businessman that Bach was. About his decision to record these works on a clavichord rather than a tangent piano as previously, Spanyi says that it allows 'nearly infinite possibilities for fine dynamic shadings' and that 'the required dynamic contrasts can be emphasized even better than on other keyboard instruments of the period'. Spanyi adds that this release is a tribute to the clavichord, and especially to his own instrument, built by Joris Potvlieghe.
Considered one of the leading early-music specialists in Europe, Terence Charlston introduces a unique instrument in his new release Mersenne's Clavichord, a clavichord built to plans and specifications by Marin Mersenne in his 1636 treatise Harmonie Universelle. This collection includes primarily French compositions of the 16th and 17th centuries, and Charleston vividly demonstrates the now rarely heard sound-world of the instrument which was so familiar to the composers of that day.
