Internationally acclaimed flutist Ashley Solomon and period ensemble Florilegium present “Spohr Collection, Vol. 2”. Ashley Solomon: “The opportunity of playing original flutes from the 18th century is a rare occurrence. Whenever the chance presents itself, it must be seized immediately!”. On Solomon’s remarkable Spohr Collection, Vol. 1 (CCS43020), he set himself a challenge to record on 9 original flutes, mostly domestic chamber music, together with his colleagues from Florilegium. This new release, Spohr Collection, Vol. 2, features six flute concertos from the 18th century on six unique flutes; some made of ivory, various woods (boxwood and ebony), and one of porcelain and gold. Each instrument is matched with repertoire from the same period it was initially made and played in. This offers a unique insight into the world of the flute virtuoso in the 18th century. These concertos by Vivaldi, C.P.E. Bach, Quantz, Leclair, Blavet and Woodcock invite the listener to experience and enjoy the rich sound world that each of these original flutes conveys.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and the keyboard concerto—a lifelong relationship, challenging and exhaust¬ing, altogether fruitful, brilliant, and even spectacular into the bargain. As a 19-year-old (under the eyes of his father, so to speak) he wrote in Leipzig his first keyboard concerto; at the age of 74 in Hamburg he finished, in the year of his death, his last example of the genre. In-between lies a treasury of fifty keyboard concertos, colossal and fathomless.
It is a wonder that this uncommonly rich and stylistically influential genre of the composer is only now coming to light. Of all the genres of composition, C. P. E. Bach’s keyboard concertos have guarded their secret longest as unpublished music—that is, precisely the genre of works that qualify as the most personal and most advanced of his compositional oeuvre. He himself says of this: “Because I have had to create most of my works for particular persons and for the public, I have therein always been more constrained than with the few pieces which I prepared just for myself. Among all my works, especially for keyboard, are just a few…concertos, which I composed with total freedom and for my own use.”

The Baroque dream team of Rachel Podger and Kristian Bezuidenhout interpret the astonishing music of C.P.E. Bach’s Violin Sonatas in C Minor, B Minor, D Major and G Minor. The two early sonatas here from the 1730s resemble the older style of his father. Listening to these works, you can imagine J.S. Bach glancing over Emanuel's shoulders while he wrote them as a teenager at home in Leipzig. The later sonatas, written 30 to 50 years later, reveal an emancipated composer whose developed musical language embodies the 'Empfindsamer Stil', the directly emotional and rhetorical style characteristic of northern-german music of the time.

Rachel Podger writes: “It was wonderful to delve into the specific musical world that belongs to C.P.E. Bach for this recording with Kris. These violin sonatas are (quite unfortunately!) largely overshadowed by the classical Viennese sonatas of Mozart and Beethoven. Part of his genius is that he is full of surprises and unpredictable turns, and this was hugely enjoyable for me during the musical partnership with the wonderful Kristian Bezuidenhout.”

REVIEWS:

Rachel Podger and Kristian Bezuidenhout are performers of the highest level of technical polish, and I am especially impressed by Bezuidenhout’s imaginative and assertive pianism. Podger’s violin was built by the Genoese maker Antonio Pazarini (Pesarinius) in 1739. Excellent sound from Channel as usual.

-- American Record Guide

Across the later sonatas Kristian Bezuidenhout and Rachel Podger savor the qualities of coaxing, pleading, playfulness, and arresting quirkiness that signal their identification with the so-called Empfindsamer Stil. But nothing is ever cut and dried. The keyboard opening of the B minor Sonata, composed some three decades after its G minor cousin, sounds like a throwback to the teenage work. And, rich in Empfindsamer fingerprints, the Arioso with five variations proves to be a 1780 respray of an earlier work.

At one level, Bezuidenhout and Podger help to pinpoint the chronology, allotting a handsome-sounding copy of an 1805 Walther fortepiano to the later works and a Taskin-inspired harpsichord to the products of the 1730s. It’s just one example of the thoughtfulness with which they approach a set of performances that are as equally persuasive in the bustling, youthful incisiveness of the G minor and D major Sonatas, as in the pristinely-paced, probingly expressive whimsy of the Arioso. Their music-making is infectiously spontaneous yet tellingly ‘considered’ – seamless rapport and impeccably-judged articulation delighting in a stream of illuminating felicities. CPE Bach’s free-spirited sonatas have surely found their free-spirited match.

-- BBC Music Magazine

This is how it’s done, my friends. A completely scrumptious new release from the queen of the Baroque violin, Rachel Podger. In partnership with keyboardist Kristian Bezuidenhout, Rachel gives to us a bit over an hour of completely entrancing music by the often underestimated Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714–1788), fifth child and second surviving son of Johann Sebastian Bach.

There should be nothing underestimated about these keyboard and violin sonatas. They are imaginative, innovative, sublime. Add to this the impeccable performances, with that breath of life Rachel delivers so well in all of her performances, the excellent partnership with Kristian Bezuidenhout, and the utterly delightful recording quality from Jared Sacks, and one has an album to savor again and again. It is a must listen recording.

There is pure joy in Podger's performances, one feels her connection with music, the composer, and her audience. Kristian Bezuidenhout is her perfect partner in these works, As with Podger, his playing is not tied to a metronome. He plays, as does she, with a degree of improvisational exploration that makes these works far more interesting than in many other hands.

Listening to them together, one feels their connection in this music. I was particularly struck by this in their excellent performance of the Sonata in C minor which fairly danced with barely contained energy in the final Presto movement – their timing together is exquisite.

The shift from harpsichord to fortepiano and back again adds great interest to the recital. With the change in instruments, the texture of the sound changes. The balance of the violin and the keyboard shifts. Hard to accomplish in a live performance, but a delightful gift across the breadth of this recording.

-- Paul Rushton of Positive Feedback

As early as his Piano Concerto in A minor, Wq1, which he composed in Leipzig at the age of 19, it was hard for Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach to conceal his ability to weave his own stylistic flair into the still nascent genre of the piano concerto. This can be seen not only pianistically in unconventional technical demands (leaps of up to two octaves combined with melodic writing, elaborate embellishments and other features typical of instrumental works) but also in unexpected extensions of the formal layout and at times abruptly harsh passages. Starting with Wq1, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach proved the tremendous potential for development and transformation of this genre. The concertos would occupy him all his life and constantly take him along new pathways. Thus, in the course of 55 years a cosmos emerged which only our generation has been given the opportunity to discover.

Miklós Spányi's latest volume in his series of the Keyboard Concertos of C.P.E. Bach is the 16th of an estimated total of 19, and we are thus reaching the end of a series which according to a reviewer on the German website Klassik Heute has earned 'a rightful place in the history of recorded music as an epoch-making achivement'. On the present disc we are treated to three works which illustrate the various responses of the composer to the changes that occurred in the musical establishment in the mid-18th century. So all is set for another exciting installment in this highly acclaimed series of 'brilliant recordings, that admits to no routine or any degree of tiredness', to quote the website klassik.com.

This new album rounds off the complete recording of the symphonies of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach that the musicians of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin began over two decades ago. The final batch offers the quintessence of his art, revealing the full originality of Johann Sebastian's inspired son, whose freedom and inventiveness paved the way for Haydn and Mozart.