Recent scholarship on Luis Misón (Mataró, 1727–Madrid, 1766) demonstrates the growing interest among the musicological community in studying the life and work of one who is an essential composer in the history of Spanish music. Musical historiography has extolled Misón's contribution to the genre of the tonadilla escénica, a genre widely appreciated in his time and which must have had a notable influence on his instrumental music, about which less is known. His talent as a flautist was appreciated within the noble circle of the House of Alba, where musical academies were held in which Misón actively participated and for which he composed 12 sonatas for transverse flute and bass dedicated to the Duke of Alba. These pieces were located in the archives of the House of Alba and described in 1927 by José Subirá (1882–1980), but unfortunately they disappeared during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). The discovery of the five hitherto unknown Sonatas for Flute and Bass by Misón represents a substantial contribution to the Spanish chamber music repertoire of the second third of the 18th century for this instrument, given the scarcity of pieces written by Hispanic composers contemporary to Misón in which the flute is definitely the real protagonist. Moreover, they are sonatas which, from a technical point of view, pose interesting challenges to the flautist, something that highlights Misón's mastery of the flute, in accordance with surviving documentation of the period.

Ortega explains that José Teixidor (c.1751–c.1811), vice-master of the Royal Chapel from 1778, considered his works to be no lesser than those of the best-known foreign composers and said of him that he was an unequalled performer on the transverse flute. The sonatas are found in five musical manuscripts preserved in the Lebrija Palace in Seville, a stately home dating from the 16th century, which in 1901 became the property of Regla Manjón y Mergelina (1851–1938), Countess of Lebrija. With regard to the sources, it seems unlikely that any of the five are autograph. (Although up to five different copyists have been identified, there is nothing to suggest that any of them could be Misón, himself.) Generally speaking, the sonatas are characterised by the importance of melody, regular phrases and steady rhythms, as can be seen in the elaborate seisillos of the Allegro moderato of the Sonata [No.3] in G major. Overall, the basso continuo line is simple – excepting the B section of the Allegro of the Sonata [No.4] in G major (undated) – allowing the role of the flute to stand out prominently. This recording is the culmination of a long process of recovery of Spanish 18th-century musical heritage that deserves to be disseminated, studied and enhanced. After more than two centuries of silence, Misón's music is heard again.

Songs of love and loss by a trio of early 18th century Spanish composers, showcasing the vocal art of a distinguished early-music soprano. Cristina Bayón Álvarez has sung with early-music luminaries such as Christophe Coin, Diego Fasolis and Carlos Mena. She has also recorded a pair of warmly received albums for Brilliant Classics, reviving the sacred music of Juan Francés de Iribarren (95859) and Romantic-era songs by female composers (‘Boulevard des femmes’, 96729). For her latest album, Cristina Bayón Álvarez turns to 18th-century Spain, presenting for the first time on record a sequence of newly edited secular cantatas. These are all brief pieces, taking amorous and pastoral themes for their subjects, alternating recitative and aria, conveying the pain of a lover separated from the object of their affections, or rejected by them. One piece stands out for its relative modernity of sentiment: La picarilla más bella by José de Torres y Martínez Bravo (ca. 1670-1738), highlighting the contempt for love on the part of a woman who prefers freedom of spirit to the suffering caused by sentimental passion. The least unfamiliar of the three composers featured on the album is Emanuele Rincón d’Astorga (1680-1775), best known for a Stabat mater of plangent expressive quality. The affecting, Italianate vocal lines of this sacred work also colour the three cantatas recorded here: Filis, que abrigas, Respirad, mas sea quedito and Sean, Filis, de mi llanto. Astorga made his name outside Spain, though eventually settled and died in Madrid; Juan de Serquiera (ca. 1655-ca. 1726) was likely also active in the Spanish capital, though of Portuguese origin. Almost nothing survives of his life and work, which makes the survival of Oh, corazón amante all the more precious, especially since it demonstrates Serquiera’s skill at affective word setting. José de Torres y Martínez Bravo is recorded as master of music at the Royal Chapel in Madrid from 1697 until his death in 1707. Not least thanks to this distinction, much more is known of his activity, including a keyboard-instruction manual and a set of Masses dedicated to Philip V of Spain. As recorded here, La picarilla más bella and Por el Tenaro monte share the expressive flair and rhythmic energy of his vernacular villancicos. Taken together, the works here make an exciting addition to the catalogue of Spanish Baroque vocal repertoire, especially in such accomplished and stylish performances.

Hans Sitt (1850–1928) was an extremely important personality in the transition between the 19th and 20th centuries, and also a remarkably prolific composer. Among all this activity, he found the time to transcribe all (!) of Beethoven's nine Symphonies, among others. 

His decision to transcribe them for violin and piano instead of for two piano so common in hus era, allows him to make the violin a part among parts, to immerse it in the (very rich) piano fabric, sometimes giving it a thematic role and sometimes not. 

His transcription of the Ninth ends up revealing many aspects of the original score of which one had never been aware. In addition to being splendid to listen to, if only in that obvious sense of the formidable challenge it poses to the performers, it becomes an important and unexpected tool for delving deeper into the structure of the Beethovenian masterpiece. And for this we shall forever have to thank him.

REVIEW:

Sitt has succeeded magnificently in distilling the original material, but it also presents a great technical challenge for the two performers, which Loguercio and Piemonti meet with bravura. But it is not only the virtuoso that they rise to, for their playing is musically satisfying as well, especially in the slow movement, where they make the music effective with subtle moods.

-- Pizzicato

Highpoints of virtuosity in Bach’s output and the Baroque organ repertoire, in new recordings by an organist with a rich catalogue of success on Brilliant Classics to his credit. As well as a host of obscure composers, Manuel Tomadin has recorded many central figures in the organ repertoire, from Buxtehude to Rheinberger. His Bach discography includes the Leipziger Choräle, BWV 651-667 (94556) and an original ‘Harmonic Seasons’ album (95786) pairing preludes and fugues with chorales that tell a story of rebirth and quiescence through the four seasons. For his latest album, he turns to undisputed highlights of the repertoire: the collection of six sonatas in three parts which Bach compiled in the late 1720s. By then he had settled into his post as Capellmeister in Leipzig, and with this set of works was evidently aiming to leave his contribution to the already rich literature of trio sonatas which had originated some decades earlier in Italy and subsequently spread across Europe, as a means of crossing sacred and secular divides with music conceived for performance by either a single keyboard player or a chamber group of musicians Being Bach, however, he determined to produce not merely another volume in the library. While he drew the material for the trio sonatas from earlier pieces, he refined and adapted them with all the ingenuity and harmonic invention at his disposal, making the finished set among the most demanding pieces ever written for the organ, then or now. The trio sonatas are accordingly often performed by a trio of chamber musicians, but there is a special freshness and virtuosity to be savoured when they are played, as here and as originally intended, by a single organist. As Manuel Tomadin notes in his valuable booklet introduction, the six sonatas run the gamut of expressive feeling, from a gravity of pathos in the central Largo of the C minor Sonata No.2 to the irrepressible joy of the finale to the C major No.5. He has made these new recordings on an instrument with an excellent Bachian pedigree: the Bosch/Schnitger organ (1686/1720) of the Hervormde church in the Dutch town of Vollenhove, and the booklet includes a full specification for the instrument.

In the 16th century, the ‘discovery’ of the Indies finally completed the human universe; it marked the beginning of a meeting between two worlds which, though violent, produced an unprecedented cultural wealth in their merging. However, the numerous historical, musicological and archaeological investigations of the sound cultures from this time have yielded few certainties. We do know, however, that this sound universe was interwoven in the baroque music of various composers, like that of Santiago de Murcia (1673–1739), an iconic figure of the late Spanish Baroque period whose work was the crucible where the sounds of both worlds, the New and the Old, were forged. The lack of sources relating to Murcia’s life has given rise to much conjecture. We know, however, that he taught guitar to Marie Louise of Savoy, the first wife of Philip V and great-niece of Louis XIV, around 1704. The Queen of Spain’s French tastes may have led Murcia to take an interest in foreign music, as he is considered ‘the first important Spanish guitarist to abandon the native style and adopt French and Italian models. Santiago de Murcia wrote three notable collections of music, the Resumen de acompañar la parte con la guitarra (1714), Passacalles y obras de guitarra por todos los tonos naturales y acidentales (1732) and the so-called Códice Saldívar No. 4 (c.1732). The Resumen de acompañar la parte con la guitarra, the only known anthology of pieces by Murcia that was printed, brings together for the first time in Spanish Baroque guitar composition numerous French dances, such as bourrée, courante, gigue, passepied and rigaudon, as well as 26 minuets and three suites in French style. Murcia’s work Pasacalles y Obras de Guitarra Por Todos los Tonos Naturales y Acidentales constitutes an essential compendium of some of the most popular instrumental musical genres of the 17th century, in particular, the passacaglia, a musical form of continuous variation in ¾ time. At first this type of music had a bad reputation due to its popular or ‘street song’3 character, but by the middle of the 18th century the passacaglia was known for its noble, courtly character. Of a totally different character, Códice Saldívar No. 4 contains some of the most representative popular music of the Baroque period, the fruit of the meeting between the New and the Old World. This album incorporates works that come from one [now two?] of the most fascinating collections of popular music of the 18th century, a product of the exchange and syncretism of the New World and the Old World, where African-American roots are undoubtedly present. By interspersing a pasacalle with a cumbee, a fandango with a zarambeque, this recording invites you to stroll along the streets of an imaginary 18th-century Novo Hispanic city and listen to its music.

New recordings of signature works by a young and tragically short-lived lion of the keyboard in late 18th-century France. This is the most extensive set of records ever dedicated to the music of Hyacinthe Jadin, sure to attract the attention of all aficionados of keyboard rarities, especially as performed by the Polish harpsichordist and pianist Marek Toporowski, with his encyclopedic understanding of Baroque and early-Classical repertoire. Born in Versailles in 1776, Jadin grew up in a musical family and was educated in both the French and German traditions, something unusual at the time. His professional career was brief; he was appointed to the Conservatoire in 1795 as one of its first professors of piano, and fell ill from the tuberculosis that would take his life in 1800. Jadin’s surviving output includes six quartets, four piano concertos, and several violin sonatas. From the evidence of these nine piano sonatas – three for each published opus number – we may hear in Jadin an astonishingly gifted composer whose music foreshadows the Romantic era – even at points the expressive poignancy of Schubert. Writing in major keys, Jadin’s elegant facility belongs to his own Classical age; it is when he ventures into remote minortonalities, such as the F sharp minor Sonata Op.4 No.2, that he seems to look forward to another, more personal age of expression. In all cases, however, Jadin evidently took Haydn as a model, for his themes are unfailingly compact and elegantly conceived for the keyboard, his development sections are likewise concise while enlivened with touches of ingenious modulation between keys. In his booklet essay, introducing Jadin’s life and work, Marek Toporowski makes the case for the composer as a French-born Dussek, an outstandingly original figure and one of the great ‘might-have-beens’ of musical history. His stylish performances on a modern copy of a Walter fortepiano support such a claim, as well as affording much delight in their own right.

A world-premiere recording of elegant, courtly French harpsichord suites by a forgotten name of the early 18th century. The early life and formation of Charles-Alexandre Jollage is shrouded in obscurity. By the time he enters the historical record in the 1720s, he had become organist for the King of Poland, Stanislas Leszcznski, at that time exiled to France and settled at the castle of Chambord in the Loire region of France. In 1733 Stanislas left Chambord for Warsaw where he claimed the throne of Poland; meanwhile Jollage seems to have settled in Paris, where his only known set of work was published in 1738, and dedicated to the Marquise of Clermont d’Amboise. After that point, it has been established with greater certainty that he remained in Paris as an organist, and died there in 1761. This ‘First Book’ of Jollage’s harpsichord works was never followed by a second, but the two suites therein have rewarded the investigation of Fernando De Luca, who has already revived the little-known harpsichord music of Christoph Graupner (96131) and Christophe Moyreau (96285) for Brilliant Classics. Jollage’s refined and elegant idiom reflects the predominant taste in France during the first half of the 18th century, enlivened throughout with touches of originality. Take, for example, the penultimate piece of the First Suite: L’italienne, which is written in an entirely contemporary style perhaps emulating Domenico Scarlatti and even resembling the sonatas of Haydn. In his booklet essay, Fernando De Luca makes a pertinent comparison between Jollage and the contemporary master Watteau. ‘By combining dance, music and painting, while suspending time and movement, Watteau captures a snapshot of human life… He combines lightness and tragedy to capture a fleeting moment. Jollage draws his creative lifeblood from the same source, while retaining all the characteristics of harpsichord music of his period.’ ‘A monumental enterprise… Listeners will want to dip in and out, perhaps taking one partita at a time, admiring both Graupner’s and De Luca’s facility and being rewarded with some attractive music confidently delivered.’ Early Music Review February 2022 (Graupner)

Blind from the age of two, a prodigiously gifted student, Jean Langlais (1907-91) produced an immense quantity of music. His organ works alone exceed in number those of of Bach. Many have hardly ever been performed. Perhaps not more than half a dozen works are regularly played or recorded today, which is what makes this new complete survey of his organ music – the first ever attempted on record – both unique and invaluable, as the authoritative document of a high point in the distinguished lineage of the French organ heritage.

The first volume of this projected complete survey ranges from his early set of 24 pieces written in the late 1930s and composed in all the major and minor keys, to the sublime economy of his Suite in Simplicitate from 1991. This major project has been undertaken jointly by the Italian organists Giorgio Benati and Fausto Caporali. Benati is a former student of Langlais, and Caporali has a string of successful French organ recordings to his credit. They have made these new recordings on Italian instruments, lending Langlais an ‘Italian accent’ while faithfully observing his expressive and registration markings in his scores. Booklet notes for each piece have been written by Giorgio Benati.

REVIEW:

Benati and Caporati offer an extensive survey of Langlais's sacred and secular output, including several liturgical collections that were published posthumously by his second wife, Marie-Louise Jacquet. The playing is energetic and committed. An excellent introduction to this neglected music, the best of which should be heard more often.

-- American Record Guide

The developmental stages of the clarinet are marked by repeated interest in improving the instrument at crucial stages in its history, definitively accomplished in an ‘accelerated’ manner during the course of the 19th century thanks to daring projects that led to an extraordinary evolution. Consequently, interest in writing aimed at probing the peculiarities of the instrument was accentuated, with French composers' attention directed towards exploring the thousands of new expressive and technical possibilities, creating a catalogue of great interest demostrating both the instrumentalists’ mastery as well as musical effects to dazzle listeners. The pieces selected for this album clearly echo that production, originating in the shadow of the Parisian conservatoire and intended to test the potential of young performers while probing the musical languages of the time, whose aesthetics were as varied as eve. Coquard's Melodie et Scherzetto, from 1904, sprang from the pen as an examination piece, a score in which technical and expressive aspects converge with a highly captivating melodic writing. In Claude Debussy's Petite pièce, the varied dynamics, combined with the near ‘improvisational’ flow of the rhythmic-melodic material, make the piece fascinating and pleasant to listen to. As is Rabaud's Solo de Concours Op.10, with its surprising texture entrusted to the clarinet right from the start in the form of a solo of considerable complexity. Messager's own Solo de Concours is rich in captivating chromaticism riven by diatonic segments. Paul Pierné's score, on the other hand, is an exercise in style, blending ‘rhetorical’ images and ‘French-style’ speculations. His cousin Gabriel’s Canzonetta of 1888 brings forth a sampler of melodies, giving rise to a path of great lyricism. The use of such sonorous imagery is in common with that of Paul Jeanjean, whose Arabesques is imbued with seductive designs aimed at enhancing the potential of the instrument, on which he was an acclaimed virtuoso. Cahuzac belongs to this category, as well, and with his Cantilène he dwells in the soundscapes of his southern France, irradiating it with a Mediterranean luminosity. Cultural belonging is a peculiar characteristic of composers living in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, as Semler-Collery demonstrates when he pilots his Rêverie et scherzo through the turbulence of early-20th-century French style. Honegger's choice for his Sonatine has a completely different origin. With its mysterious beginning founded on skillful chromaticism with vague oriental echoes, the subsequent Lent et soutenu reveals a greater rigour in that same sound path, entrusted to the woodwind, austere and mysterious. It is with the Vif et rythmique that the “restlessness” is laid to rest in order to rely on “improvisational” sonorities that wink at agile and impertinent jazz gestures.

BEDRICH SMETANA 200 (1824-1884)

The most complete collection available of music by the father of Czech nationalism in music. Ma Vlast, The Bartered Bride and the String Quartet ‘From My Life’: all written within a decade of each other, all so fundamental in their different genres in forming a Czech national identity in music that it can seem incredible they were the work of a single composer.

This extensive collection contains the complete orchestral works, the two passionate and highly personal string quartets, the dramatic Piano Trio, a generous selection of piano music, including the complete Czech Dances, and the opera The Bartered Bride, sung in German.

Performers include the Janacek Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Theodore Kuchar (Classics Today writes: “Performance: 9. Theodore Kuchar and his forces tackle Ma Vlast with plenty of enthusiasm and vigor; indeed, from Sarka onward this is one of the best versions available.”), the Czech Stamic Quartet, Czech pianist Antonin Kubalek, Roberto Plano, and the Staatskapelle Dresden/Otmar Suitner.

The performances here all won enthusiastic reviews on their original release; gathered together here, they make an ideal introduction to Smetana’s world.

‘One of the most dramatic sets of the tone-poems that I have ever encountered.’ Rob Cowan, Gramophone, September 2019

‘Wonderful conducting and playing of both familiar and unfamiliar Smetana.’ Fanfare, November 2008 (Orchestral works)

‘The Stamitz Quartet are one of the most impressive [Czech quartets]… Their performance of the E minor is on the grandest scale.’ Gramophone, March 2005

While Dandrieu’s early harpsichord pieces were written in the shadow of 17th-century composers, the three books published between 1724 and 1735 demonstrate a radically new direction for the composer. Such a shift can be attributed to changing tastes: harpsichord music as early as the last decade of the previous century shows a gradual distancing from many techniques that were primarily associated with the lute. Dandrieu, like most musicians, probably spent much of his earlier life as a teacher and would have been well aware of the abilities and tastes of those for whom the suites were written. They retain a naïve simplicity that is often lacking elsewhere. Nothing is too complicated: ornamentation is straightforward, textures tend towards two-part writing, and figuration always falls comfortably under the hand.

The Premier livre finishes with what Dandrieu refers to as ‘a suite in its own right’ of ten tableaux: Les Charactères de la Guerre. It demonstrates Dandrieu’s propensity to revise earlier and possibly popular works to suit new media. The tableaux follow a tradition among composers for depicting battle scenes. The tradition continued in France until late into the 18th century with Claude-Bénigne Balbastre’s 1792 appeal to the revolutionaries in Marche des Marseillois.

During the years leading up to the beginning of the 20th century, Edvard Grieg was the most significant Scandinavian composer. His 4 Norwegian dances Op. 35 are arrangements for piano four-hands of old folk tunes. The Symphony in C minor was composed in 1863–64. The melodies of its second and third movements later came to be known in the present arrangement for piano duet known as 2 Symphonic Pieces Op. 14. Grieg composed a score for Peer Gynt of some 90 minutes of incidental music, from which he selected the most beautiful numbers for two orchestral suites which he arranged in versions for piano solo and piano four-hands.

Grieg wrote the 2 Walzer-Capricen Op.37 for piano four hands in 1883. The 2 Nordic Melodies, Op. 63 were originally written for string orchestra in 1895. The work is dedicated to the Norwegian and Swedish ambassador to Paris Frederik Due. Due sent Grieg some compositions for violin and piano, and one of his melodies appears in the first piece: ‘In Folk Style’. The second piece, comprising the ‘Cow-Call’ and ‘Peasant Dance’, is a reworking of two pieces (Nos. 18 and 22) from Grieg’s Op. 17 (25 Norwegian Folk Ballads and Dances).

REVIEW:

Grieg had a mastery of the two-piano idiom that is well represented here by Plano and Del Negro. I am very pleased to have this excellent release in my library. It has great piano sound and some of my favorites along with a few rare pieces.

-- American Record Guide

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was widely known for his passionate, incomparable improvisations on the clavichord, most characteristically in the form of free fantasia. His compositions were unique in style, full of contrasts, and universally admired by several generations; the Vienna Classicists, even Beethoven and Schubert, considered him their musical father. Declamatory, improvisatory style is of course the epitaph of all 18th-century music – exemplified in Johann Sebastian Bach's Chromatic Fantasia BWV903, with its central recitative and broken chords audaciously passing through distant harmonies. Johann Nikolaus Forkel, author of the first Bach biography and part of C.P.E. Bach’s literary circles, transmitted a refined version in his manuscript (P 212) and subsequent edition that may derive from a revised original version once in possession of the Bach sons. C.P.E. Bach’s Fantasia in C minor (published in 1753) bears distinct similarities to his father’s Fantasia chromatica, and it has been suggested that it may in fact have been a tombeau to the elder Bach. The deep personal nature and connection between the two works is explicit. For Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and the ‘Bachists’, the most expressive and intimate compositions were reserved for the clavichord. It was in the clavichord that one might ‘find the soundboard of your heart. … Have no regrets when alone under the moonlight you improvise, or refresh your soul on a summer night, or when you celebrate a spring evening; ah! then pine not for the strident harpsichord. See, your clavichord breathes as gently as your heart.’ (Ch.F.D. Schubart: Musikalische Rhapsodien III, 1786) Charles Burney, who visited C.P.E. Bach in Hamburg in 1772, described the composer improvising at his legendary clavichord, built by Gottfried Silbermann: ‘He grew so animated and possessed that he not only played but looked like one inspired. His eyes were fixed, his lower lip fell, and drops of effervescence distilled from his countenance.’ The original 18th-century instruments heard on this recording – from Regensburg, Stockholm and Vienna – demonstrate possibilities the like of which would have been known to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in Berlin and Hamburg and ultimately derive from the Saxon school of G. Silbermann.

The only available complete recording of a hugely influential set of Baroque trio sonatas by a northern-Italian pioneer of the genre. Unrivalled in its breadth, renowned for reviving countless names of the past in authoritative new recordings, the Baroque-music catalogue of Brilliant Classics welcomes a significant new name to its long list of forgotten composers: Giovanni Battista Fontana (1589–1630). Born in Brescia, dying in nearby Padova, Fontana is known for a single major publication, a collection of 18 Sonate a 1, 2, 3 per il violino o cornetto, fagotto, chitarone, violoncino o simile altro instromento, published posthumously in Venice in 1641. The Italian early-music Lux Terrae ensemble presents a new recording of the complete set, demonstrating its foundational significance within the rich history of the Italian trio sonata as a genre. As in the chiaroscuro technique in painting, that defines images through the play of of light and shade, Fontana uses a musical chiaroscuro that lends theatricality and dynamism to these sonatas through a dialectic of contrasts and resolutions between contrasting idioms. All 18 sonatas follow a single-movement form, divded into contrasting sections. Their melodic material breathes the cantabile air of the 17th-century canzona or the dance and sometimes recurs, invariably elaborated, to form a simple arch design. Sonatas Nos. 2 and 6, on the other hand, comprise sections that grow out of recitative-like monody interspersed with freer instrumental flourishes, but subdivisions in dance-like triple metre are rarely absent for long. Lux Terrae is led from the violin by the Italian-trained Bolivian violinist Neyza Copa, who also introduces these Baroque rarities in a booklet essay. For her, Fontana’s sonatas shine as ‘a real jewel of the early Baroque, both in terms of the stylistic evolution of instrumental composition, and the development of an idiomatic language for the violin… Fontana is probably the most important composer of early Baroque violin music.’

Johann Schneider was a German organist, violinist and composer (1702, Lautertal–1788, Leipzig). He was a pupil of Nicolas Mueller in his hometown and continued his studies with Johann Hartmann Reinmann in Saalfeld between 1717 and 1720. Around 1720, he became Johann Sebastian Bach's organ and harpsichord pupil in Köthen. In conjunction with his keyboard work with Bach, he studied violin with Johann Gottlieb Graun in Merseburg and with Johann Graf in Rudolstadt. In 1721, Johann Schneider became court organist and first violinist (concertmaster) in Saalfeld in his native Coburg. From 1726 he was employed as violinist in the court chapel in Weimar (Weimarer Hofkapelle), and he was later appointed organist of the Nicolaikirche in Leipzig in 1729, holding this position for the rest of his career. Schneider achieved a commendable reputation as a truly great organist, as Lorenz Mizler quotes: 'His organ preludes are of such good taste in this field, with the exception of Mr. Bach, whose pupil he was, that one cannot hear better in Leipzig'. A small number of his works are contained in the manuscript Mus. Ms. 30377, preserved in the Berlin State Library. His style shows a correlation with that of J.S. Bach, but the influence of the Galant style is also detected in various moments of his music. Johann Philipp Kirnberger was born in Saalfeld in 1721 and died in Berlin in 1783. He received his first training in harpsichord and violin within his family and then continued his studies with the organist Johann Peter Kellner in Gräfenroda. In 1738, he was an organ pupil under Heinrich Nikolaus Gerber in Sondershausen, then pursued further studies with Johann Sebastian Bach in Leipzig between 1739 and 1741, which proved pivotal to his development. More than a composer, he is remembered as a 'witness' to Bach's work: he took charge of copying much of his master's music. He kept the manuscript of the Brandenburg Concertos and collected several chorales known today as the 'Kirnberger Chorales' in which we find BWV numbers 690 to 731a – sincerely feeling himself vested with the mission of divulging Johann Sebastian Bach's greatness. His personality was that of a didact, and his compositions are predominantly the consequence of his treatises (L'arte di comporre bene, 1774/79). This attitude is exemplified in the Clavierübung compiled between 1762 and 1766 containing pieces structured in order of increasing difficulty and carefully fingered according to the precepts of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. He wrote only a handful of pages for organ: a few sporadic preludes to chorales, the eight fugues for organ or harpsichord (featured on this CD) and a 'Clavierfuge mit dem Contrapunct in der Oktava'. His figure is thus summed up not so much in an innovative spirit as in that of a person careful to pass on the inheritance he received.