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.

Some of C.P.E. Bach’s large number of single-movement pieces for solo keyboard were published in collections, beginning with the Probestücke (Study Pieces) of 1753, included on Vol. 22 in this series. Here Miklós Spányi presents three other sets intended primarily for didactic use: the two collections of Kurze und leichte Clavierstücke and the 6 Sonatine nuove. Of the 28 pieces contained in them, only one is longer than 3 minutes, the majority being less than two minutes long. Not all his shorter pieces were intended for studying; the closing Abschied for one has an almost private character.

Miklós Spányi is one of the world’s most acknowledged scholars and performers of the works of C.P.E Bach. On this release he splits Bach’s large “Fortsetzung” Sonatas over two discs and includes the embellished versions that Bach may have intended as study material for his students.

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.

Even before the publication of the first collection of Clavier-Sonaten für Kenner und Liebhaber in 1779, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach began composing works intended for a follow-up. This time he expanded the original concept, however, and included not just three sonatas, but also three rondos 'for the fortepiano'. In his treatment of the rondo-form, Bach was – as always – a mold-breaker and in the ‘Kenner und Liebhaber’ rondos the refrain melody inevitably creeps into the episodes, which in turn wander through distant tonalities. The phrase structure is frequently asymmetrical, and the borders between sections are often blurred, making this rather schematic form into something of a roller-coaster ride. Taking note of Bach's instructions regarding the choice of instrument, Miklós Spányi performs them on a tangent piano, an early form of the piano. The strings of the tangent piano are struck by small wooden slips (‘tangents’) and the basic sound is reminiscent of the harpsichord, but this can be modified in a number of ways. Featuring the clavichord, the previous issue in this highly regarded series presented six sonatas from Bach’s first two collections. On the present release, Spányi combines the rondos with Sonatas 4 and 6 from the first collection, as their more extrovert character makes them suited for the tangent piano. He has also recorded Sonata No. 1 of that collection for a second time, giving followers of the series an opportunity to compare the effects that result from using the different instruments.

Johann Joachim Quantz was the most innovative performer and composer for the flute in the eighteenth century. He was also the teacher, composer and flute-maker to Frederick II, ‘The Great’, King of Prussia. Royal concerts were the principal venue for Quantz’s concertos where their constant invention and brilliance were intensified by his specially designed flutes. The A minor Concerto has only recently been retrieved from the Russian National Library in St Petersburg, whilst the G major’s cadenzas have been preserved, fully written-out, providing a valuable direct link to performance practices in Quantz’s time. Poignantly, Frederick himself completed the C minor Concerto after Quantz’s death.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was more systematic than many of his composer colleagues when it came to keeping track of his own works and made at least two catalogues of his compositions for solo keyboard. At various times he also destroyed manuscripts that remained in his possession, especially those of early works. But even so, there are a number of pieces that slipped through the net, and several of them can be found on this album. A few of them were included anonymously into the second Clavierbuchlein for Anna Magdalena Bach, while Emanuel Bach was still living in his father’s home in Leipzig. Among the pieces are some that have been identified as being by Bach only recently, during the ongoing work of producing a printed edition of the composer’s complete works. As devised by Miklos Spanyi, the programme is a colourful mix of brief dance movements and other miniatures, provides both variety and insights into the formative years of the composer. It ends with Bach’s Variations on a Menuet by Locatelli, the most technically demanding of his variation sets composed in 1735 when he was a young man of 21.

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.'

This album 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. To provide compositions for these new keyboard players was financially profitable, but Bach also had another reason for welcoming arrangements: the keyboard instruments were his favorite medium, and he devoted himself to making them into solo instruments as important as the violin and other melody instruments. The eighteen short pieces on this well-filled disc all exist in versions for various small groups of instruments or, in some cases, for mechanical instruments such as the barrel organ. Miklós Spányi has grouped them around three larger-scaled works, of which two are arrangements of symphonies while the Concerto in F major for solo keyboard may in fact be an original composition: a version for keyboard and orchestra exists, but is possibly a later development. In the case of several of the arrangements it is uncertain who made them – some of them only survive in the hand of one of Bach’s admirers. In his liner notes to the disc, Spányi proposes that they could in fact be the original versions, however, as he sees a striking similarity to Bach’s other, indisputably genuine small keyboard pieces.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach had begun his series für Kenner und Liebhaber – ‘for Connaisseurs and Amateurs’ – with the traditional formula of a set of six sonatas, but became more unconventional in the second and third collection in which he alternated three sonatas with three rondos. With the fourth instalment, published in 1783, he went further still as he increased the number of pieces to seven and added ‘free fantasias’ to the sonatas and rondos. Continuing his survey of Bach’s keyboard music – and the Kenner und Liebhaber series – Miklós Spányi performs the collection on a tangent piano, an early form of the piano with strings that are struck by small wooden slips (‘tangents’). The basic sound of the instrument is reminiscent of the harpsichord, but this can be modified in a number of ways through the use of various devices. Spányi rounds off the programme with two further works, of which the Sonata in F major, Wq 65/19 may be the very last keyboard composition that Bach completed during his lifetime.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach published the first collection in his series 'for Connaisseurs and Amateurs' in 1779, at the age of 65, and the sixth and final in 1787, a year before his death. Throughout the series he continues to develop the three genres which are featured in it – sonata, rondo and fantasia. In the sixth collection, the fantasias and rondos continue to resemble each other in structure and in stylistic features: abrupt tempo changes, disruptive rhythms, and constant harmonic non sequiturs. Bach gives them ample dimensions, but as in previous collections he continues to reduce the length of the sonatas, to the point that Sonata No. 1 is the shortest work of the collection, although it is in three distinct movements. On this amply-filled album, Miklós Spányi also includes four other works from Carl Philipp's last decade which in various ways underline the composer's boundless curiosity. The Sonata in G major, Wq 65/48 was composed for an experimental keyboard instrument with a bowing device coupled to it – a 'Bogenclavier' – while Bach in the set of variations Wq 118/9 gives us his own take on La Folia, the harmonic scheme that almost a century earlier had inspired composers such as Corelli, Marin Marais and Vivaldi, as well as his own father, in the famous ‘Peasant Cantata’.

François Couperin, one of the most significant and important composers of French Baroque music, composed fourteen concertos between 1714 and 1724, known as "Concerts Royaux" and "Les Goûts-réunis, ou Nouveaux Concerts." The fantastic oboist Emanuel Abbühl has selected five of these for his new GENUIN CD. For his album, he takes advantage of the composer's decision to allow performers the freedom to choose whether the main voice should be played with harpsichord, oboe, violin, flute, or bassoon. Abbühl collaborates with fellow musicians David Tomàs (bassoon), Carla Sanfelix (Baroque cello), Miklós Spányi (harpsichord), and Benoît Fallai (theorbo), combining modern and historical instruments with the utmost respect for style, colors, and tempi: truly ear-opening!

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.