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.

This disc completes the set of CPE Bach’s Fortsetzung Sonatas, Wq51 that began in Volume 26 in this series. Although the sonatas were not published together with the composer's own variants on them, such alternative versions exist in manuscript, and splitting this set of large-scale works over two discs, Miklós Spányi also includes recordings of these varied or embellished versions that may represent the composer's revisions but could equally well have been intended as study material for his students.

New: supplemented and completed! "The recordings are of the highest quality throughout! The different interpretations are also convincing, original sound ensembles underline the mastery of Bach's son! A must for every music lover!" "The CPE Bach Edition brings together beautiful music played by outstanding musicians. Ideal for anyone who wants to get to know the work of this composer at an affordable price."

I had the priceless opportunity of speaking with Nikolaus Harnoncourt about the keyboard concertos of C. P. E. Bach. His enormous insight, paired with an unpretentious attitude, and his always palpable enthusiasm for the music, impressed me deeply. In the end he said to me, in order to quash immediately all doubt about recording the Bach keyboard concertos on a modern piano: "Do that, do that absolutely; and if you can manage to get something rolling with it, I will be the first to congratulate you." What generosity, but also what a responsibility!" Michael Rische

It was in 1747 that Johann Sebastian Bach received an invitation from King Frederic II of Prussia. Bach travelled with Wilhelm Friedmann - his eldest son - to Potsdam, where Carl Philipp Emanuel, his second eldest son, was accompanist to the king's court. This was the famous visit during which Johann Sebastian improvised a ricercar or fugue in three voices on a theme supplied by the monarch and later led him to compose the Musical Offering. This recording presents sections of Bach's Musical Offering, including the Trio Sonata, side by side with Trios by both Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philip Emanuel. The intention was to shed light on the familial character of Bach's visit to Potsdam and Berlin in 1747 and it's musical consequences. The importance of this gathering between the three most famous members of the Bach family and the impact it had on their respective lives and careers cannot be overestimated. For Johann Sebastian himself, however, this was to be brief: he died three years later in 1750.

Two years ago, the Arte dei Suonatori ensemble and it's dynamic conductor and harpsichordist Marcin Swiatkiewicz presented C.P.E. Bach's 'Hamburg' Symphonies (BIS-2459) - highly expressive and personal works. Nervous, full of unexpected twists and turns, surprises, contrasts and 'affects', they are, in a word, marked by Empfindsamkeit (heightened emotionality). This time, Arte dei Suonatori and Marcin Swiatkiewicz present six 'Berlin' Symphonies, composed between 1755 and 1758, that is, before the 'Hamburg' Symphonies. Arte dei Suonatori and it's conductor chose the original versions for strings alone with harpsichord continuo, making this recording the first to offer all these works together in their original forms without the wind parts, which were added later. The chamber-like aspect of the writing is highlighted here by the ensemble's compact instrumental force, where each musician participates on an equal footing and everyone is heard. Swiatkiewicz also points out that their interpretation, resting on historically oriented performance practices, is "grounded in a constant search for analogies between music and poetry, alongside a close attention to prosody and dance forms", ensuring that they will undoubtedly delight music lovers of the 21st century.

A quartet of German Baroque masters at their most daring and outlandish, exploring the harmonic quirks of mean-tone temperament on the organ. Manuel Tomadin has assembled an impressive library of Baroque-era albums on Brilliant Classics, including critically acclaimed surveys of Bach and comprehensive documents of the surviving output of lesser-known names such as Christian Erbach and Vincent Lubeck. 'A very attractively conceived and well-executed Bach organ recital disc,' noted Fanfare of Manuel Tomadin's diverse recital (95786): 'All recital discs should be this thoughtfully conceived and well done; cordially recommended.' In the same vein, this new recording leads the listener through both unfamiliar and well-known names and works, drawing out the original meaning of the term Baroque as 'the broken pearl' - something strange and exquisite. At a time before the 'even-tempered' system of tuning homogenised the spaces between different intervals - some of them being narrower or wider than others in what is known as 'mean-tone' temperament - composers such as Buxtehude might exploit those idiosyncrasies to produce harmonies which were deliberately awkward or dissonant. Manuel Tomadin has chosen the Praeludium in E BuxWV141, the Praeludium in F sharp minor BuxWV146 and a chorale prelude, Nun bitten wir den heiligen Geist BuxWV208, to illustrate this point. The most unfamiliar name here is Johann Heinrich Buttstett (1666-1727) - Capellmeister in the central-German town of Erfurt - who defended conservative theories of musical evolution as a writer and teacher, but also produced works which sound quite radical for their time, such as an extensive Praeludium and Canzona in D minor. JS Bach is represented here by a pair of organ preludes and fugues (BWV534 in F minor and BEV547 in C major) from his Weimar period - relatively early in his career, but no less experimental for that. The search for harmonic extremes was continued by the most radically inventive of his sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel, and Manuel Tomadin demonstrates this continuity with the chorale prelude 'Ich ruf zu dir'. A fascinating and unique collection, performed on the authentic and historically significant Hinsz organ of 1738 at the Broederkerk in the Dutch town of Kampen.

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.

Following a highly anticipated televised performance at the 2023 BBC Proms, Dunedin Consort and its director John Butt now release Mozart’s ‘Great’ Mass in C minor and Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach’s Heilig ist Gott on Linn. Devised to celebrate his marriage to Constanze, but left unfinished at the composer’s death, Mozart’s Mass can clearly be traced back to the choral writing of Johann Sebastian Bach and his son, Carl Phillip Emmanuel. This musical genealogy is displayed here in a lavish double-chorus, double-orchestra feast where both works echo each other. No stranger to Mozart – the ensemble’s recording of the Requiem was a Gramophone Award Winner and Grammy-nominated – Dunedin Consort puts its stamp on these most spectacular contributions to church music.

Son of the famous Johann Sebastian, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was a renowned keyboard virtuoso in the 18th century. A prolific composer and theorist of keyboard instruments, he forged the aesthetic of Empfindsamkeit, a style in which emotion is conveyed through subtle contrasts and harmonic surprises. From his Berlin sonatas to his flamboyant Fantasies, his work, published with great pomp for connoisseurs and amateurs, remains a pinnacle of musical eloquence. Arnaud de Pasquale, through the virtuosity of his playing, reveals all it's depth and expressive power.

The instrument 'flute' is closely associated with the Prussian king Frederick the Great and his residence Sanssouci, as the Prussian king was a passionate flutist and numerous works were composed for him. For the recorder player Isaac Makhdoomi, it is a special challenge to transfer these works, which were actually composed for a transverse flute, to his instrument. The idea behind this was to bring new aspects and facets to the works originally composed for the transverse flute, which he actually succeeds in doing brilliantly.

Why, in a booklet accompanying a recording of "Flute Music at the Court of Frederick the Great", is an attempt being made at this point to take a look into the soul of a damaged monarch? There is a guiding "thread of Ariadne" that leads through the labyrinthine trials and tribulations of Frederick's life and suffering – a singular passion that he discovered at a young age and never forgot throughout his life. It is the love of music, especially the love of playing the "flûte traversière".

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)

This recording combines three of the most significant musicians belonging to the generation of the empfindsame or "sentimental" style. As a reaction to the late baroque of J.S. Bach and Handel, they systematically explored contrast and extreme juxtapositions in their compositions. This avant-garde style remained in fashion for only a short period, but anticipated many pre-eminent aspects of early romanticism. In this recording a harpsichord concerto by W.F. Bach (J.S. Bach's eldest son) is combined with two concertos by Bohemian composer G. Benda. They perfectly illustrate the empfindsame style, quickly oscillating between excitement and melancholy, furious frenzy and serene calm. The programme concludes with major solo harpsichord pieces by C.P.E. Bach and a beautiful Adagio and Fugue for orchestra by W.F. Bach - showcasing the composer's ability in the stile antico.

Music of the classical and pre-classical periods is the language of ideas and gestures. Musical gesture becomes intelligible by recurrence and recognition. Turning an idea on one’s tongue, trying it out in slightly different wording, with a new intonation and in a changed voice creates the musical discourse — the story told, or the argument held. This is the definition of variation, and variation lies at the heart of musical expression.

The sonata form is sometimes considered nowadays as the greatest achievement of musical thought of that period, but composers of the 18th century were happy to turn to more humble forms. Of these, Variations and Fantasias are probably those with the most distinguished histories. In Variations, an idea is confined to the simplest frame of a musical period, unable to break its own formal boundaries, but free to mutate in all possible ways inside them; in the Fantasia, a musical thought is born, develops and flourishes with no seeming restraint, but for the free will of the composer to structure this flow, and yet, they have in common this constant tension between the urge to repeat an idea and the necessity of altering, transforming it. This hidden conflict feeds creativity and the imagination: it generates, ultimately, the classical style.

This album is a story of family and friendship. Positioned between homage to a father figure and modernity, the viola da gamba sonatas of Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian Bach are a revealing element in the history of the Bach family and its ties of friendship with two families of virtuoso instrumentalists, the Abels and the Hesses, who had already inspired the work of Johann Sebastian. Carl Philipp Emanuel was active in Berlin, encouraged by the presence of the violist Ludwig Christian Hesse and the enthusiasm of his patron Frederick the Great ("When I am not reading, I am writing, and when I am not writing, I am playing the viol" wrote his nephew, the future Friedrich Wilhelm II). The friendship between Carl Friedrich Abel and Johann Christian gave rise to the latter's sonatas in London. This Arcana release is not only a continuation of Guido Balestracci's recording of J.S. Bach’s viola da gamba sonatas that was awarded a CHOC by Le Monde de la Musique, but is also a celebration of one of the greatest families in the history of music. Guido Balestracci, together here with keyboard player Paolo Corsi, presents another instalment of his long-term project with the l'Amoroso ensemble: the re-evaluation of the viola da gamba and the other members of its family, with a special focus on the lesser-known post-baroque repertoire. His programmes of music for viol by Schaffrath, Haydn's Divertimenti for baryton, and a Schubertiade based on the arpeggione all bear witness to this.

Manuel Granatiero presents his first solo album, following several successful recordings with Amandine Beyer's Gli Incogniti and Accademia Ottoboni, of which he is a founding member. Here, Manuel is joined by Yu Yashima and Marco Ceccato, as he turns his attention to the flute music of C.P.E. Bach. The outcome of this project is Light and Darkness, five sonatas chosen from the substantial oeuvre that the composer dedicated to this instrument. In addition to the famous sonata for solo flute, the program includes two sonatas with harpsichord obbligato and two sonatas with basso continuo. Demonstrating a wealth of stylistic and writing variety, they represent the entirety of the period in which Bach composed his surviving flute sonatas: BWV1020 written in his youth at his father's house in Leipzig, Wq124 written during his early years of study in Frankfurt, Wq128 and Wq132 during his service at the court of Frederick II, and Wq83 during his mature years in Hamburg. This is therefore a miniature exploration of the universe of the 'Berlin Bach' through some of his most intimate works that encourage us to experience the most diverse human emotions, from the darkest to the brightest ones.

Capriccio continues to celebrate its 40th anniversary with this retrospective of some of the greatest instrumental recordings in its catalog. The keyboard mavens: Ton Koopman in Bach-Senior, the great Christine Schornsheim in Bach-Sons Concertos, and Tzimon Barto, the muscular master of the soft touch, in Brahms. Wind-aces Burkhard Glaetzner (oboe), Eckart Haupt (flute), and Reinhold Friedrich (trumpet) playing baroque and classical period masters. The trusty Petersen Quartet and the inquisitive Linos Ensemble, who have always been an essential element of the repertoire exploration that soon became Capriccio’s hallmark, and the arch-musician Tabea Zimmermann and Vladimir Spivakov representing true highlights among the high strings. A generous and tasty synopsis of what this plucky label is about!

When Capriccio started out in 1982, still producing LPs and tapes, it was the first digital Beethoven Symphony cycle with the Dresden Philharmonic and Herbert Kegel that first turned heads. Several other key projects were pivotal to the label quickly establishing a reputation as a source of quality music and performances. Foremost among them, never out of the catalogue and still loved today, are the recordings with Sandor Végh. Then, in the mid-nineties those of Sir Neville Marriner’s, who, after long being synonymous with the Philips label, recorded widely for Capriccio, both with his Academy Of St Martin in the Fields and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra. Contemporaries of Mozart’s that have emerged on Capriccio include Joseph Martin Kraus, François-Joseph Gossec, and Jan Ladislav Dussek. They are performed by early music and classical period Capriccio-favorites such as Concerto Köln or the CPE Bach Chamber Orchestra. This box set features the label’s most important ensembles, orchestras, and conductors, from the classical period to the 20th century, when, in 2005, Capriccio released the first complete Shostakovich Cycle with the Gürzenich Orchestra and Dmitrji Kitajenko.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This disc features solo keyboard arrangements of works by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach originally scored for other instruments. In the second half of the eighteenth century the demand for keyboard music increased rapidly, as musical skills became a social requisite for young ladies of the upper classes. Providing compositions for these new keyboard players was financially profitable, but Bach also had another reason for welcoming arrangements: keyboard instruments were his favourite medium. The seven short pieces on this well-filled disc all exist in versions for various small groups of instruments or, in some cases, for mechanical instruments. In his comments, Spanyi suggests that they could in fact be the original versions, perhaps written down in keyboard notation as drafts for further versions, and later arranged by Bach on for various ensembles. Miklos Spanyi has grouped these short pieces around four larger-scale works, of which two are arrangements of symphonies, probably not arranged by or for the composer himself. The solo keyboard arrangements of the two concertos, made by Bach himself and easier to play than the original concertos, were intended for amateurs. On this disc, Spanyi uses an extremely versatile and colourful tangent piano, a very popular instrument in the second half of the 18th century. This particular instrument was built in 1998, after a model from 1799.

For fifteen exciting years the manuscripts of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's keyboard concertos have held me in their thrall. Both delightful and challenging at the same time, a hitherto unpublished and therefore completely unknown world revealed it's hidden beauties. With an eighth CD, my series comprising around half of all the available keyboard concertos now comes to an end. This musical form - according to Emanuel Bach himself his 'most personal' - occupied the composer repeatedly throughout his lifetime. From the astonishingly self-confident concerto Wq1 by a 19-year-old to the cheerfully ironic Wq47 from the year of his death, a long and very fruitful career is illustrated by the search for distinctive new means of expression. As later with the symphonies composed in Hamburg, Emanuel Bach here also took 'all the liberties he needed'. We find bold innovation as well as exuberant kinetic joy, exquisite chromaticism and demanding virtuosity alongside profound contemplation. Michael Rische