Moving from the style galant to the Age of Revolutions, this album is an invitation to discover half a century of the cello concerto's history. A few years after a sensational first volume devoted to C.P.E. Bach, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Riccardo Minasi and Ensemble Resonanz pay tribute to the hypersensitivity of the cello and honor with panache the transcendental virtuosity of the unjustly overlooked Antonín Kraft.

Young and foolish is the title Café Zimmermann has chosen for this program, which features music from the 1770s and 1780s by Mozart and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, starting with Mozart’s famous and sparkling Divertimento KV 138. For this fascinating W.A.-C.P.E. face-off, Café Zimmermann has invited an exceptional musician: the fortepianist Alexander Melnikov. They perform the Concerto no.17 in G major KV 453, of which Mozart said in a letter to his father that (like his concertos KV 450 and KV 451) ‘they make you sweat’! Melnikov is joined by harpsichordist Céline Frisch, co-founder of the ensemble, in Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Concerto for fortepiano, harpsichord, and orchestra, the only one of its kind ever composed, a work full of energy and mischief.

REVIEW:

This album hosts works by two of the greatest composers of the Classical Era, C.P.E. Bach and Mozart. The performances, featuring the outstanding solo artistry of pianist Alexander Melnikov and harpsichordist Céline Frisch, supported by the ensemble Café Zimmermann, are captivating, and the recording boasts a clear and intimate soundscape.

— The Classic Review (Tal Agam)

The 18th century had a dynamic musical scene in which much experimentation went alongside respect for accepted traditions. A wide range of hybrid forms emerged in the wake of the French dance suite and the new Italian solo sonata: not only sonatas with divergent forms and suites in which French character titles suddenly gave way to Italian tempo indications, but also everything in between. Korneel Bernolet here presents an anthology of European 'compiled' sonatas in the form of or derived from suites, alongside contrasting compositions that sought the true sonata form. He plays the Joannes Daniel Dulcken magisterial 1747 single-keyboard harpsichord, whose ambassador and titular player he is.

For some time, writes viola virtuoso Mathis Rochat in the preface of this new release, he had been thinking to adapt Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's Cello Concerto in B-flat Major for his own use. He calls it a "somewhat audacious transcription", but the range of the solo part is well-suited for the viola and can be performed on the instrument with great ease. Which had to be proven first! Indeed, the young Swiss artist lends the "higher-pitched" composition a power of momentum and elasticity from which the already supple, melodious music can only benefit. All the more, since it is a superb "overture" to both of the following works, which Johann Gottlieb Graun, eleven years Bach's senior, had intended for the viola. Sometimes flanked by its little sister, as in the quiet Sturm und Drang C Minor concerto, then alone in sole competition with the string orchestra, this under-appreciated instrument shows in the music of the Berlin Court a wealth of expression that need not hide behind its higher and lower rivals.

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.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach wrote this set of six keyboard concertos Wq43 once he had been released from the constricting service to Frederick the Great of Prussia. Published in 1772, these concertos are among the first-fruits of such liberated imagination. The solo parts of these works will test the mettle of any aspiring or proven virtuoso. Their greatest originality, though, lies in their form.

Each concerto is written cyclically, or continuously, meaning that one movement leads directly into the next. Even the cadenzas are fully written out, anticipating in this regard Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Concerto of two generations later.

The panoply of CPE’s instrumentation is necessarily compressed by this transcription of the concertos for two harpsichords, but the vitality of dialogue is fully preserved. It was made (or at least copied) by Johann Gottlieb Haußstädler, a copyist working for Peter August, the organist for the Elector of Saxony. The two men may have collaborated on the arrangement; at any rate, it has been unknown until now, and comes to life in the hands of a pair of Italian musicians with a serious pedigree in recording music of this period for Brilliant Classics.