If it were not for Johann Sebastian and his gifted sons, would we, and should we, have more than a passing interest in the works of less celebrated members of the Bach dynasty? Reinhard Goebel's much-praised two-disc collection of cantatas by Johann Sebastian's forebears (Archiv, 2/87—nla) gives a vivid impression of dedicated, devotional music-making and shares two contributors, Johann Michael (1648–94) and Johann Christoph (1642–1703), with this Teldec reissue. Listening to the organ works here one gains the same impression not of dutiful seventeenth-century professionalism, but of middle-German craftsmen working in a medium in which they are entirely comfortable and articulate. As someone Somerset-born and Dorset-bred myself, I warm to the musical accents of rural Thuringia or Saxony undiluted by taint of cosmopolitanism: the strikingly simple alternation between polyphony and forthright chorale statement m Johann Michael's setting of Allein Gott in der Hoh sei Ehre transports one vividly into the Sunday morning service (Hauptgottesdienst) at Arnstadt. The profundity of his elder brother, Johann Christoph, in his httle Warum betrubst setting is entirely instinctive, never striven for—the natural gravity and wisdom of the countryman.
Both Johann Sebastian and Carl Philipp Emmanuel considered Johann Christoph to be the most considerable of their composing ancestors, and with good reason, judging by the impressive chromaticism of his Prelude and Fugue in E flat. Yet the younger generation has its arresting moments and evidently retained the family's contrapuntal genius: the Fantasia and Fugue in F by Johann Ernst (1722–77), who was a pupil of Johann Sebastian at the Thomasschule in Leipzig, is a really striking piece, combining the more modern Empfindsamkeit gestures with thoroughly decisive fugal technique.
The choice of organ, built by Heinrich Gottlieb Herbst in 1731 is ideal, worlds away from the chilly and imperious instruments of North Germany. Set in a fairly dry acoustic, its bold and varied foundation tone rises to a ripe baritonal snarl in tuttis an idiosyncratic and characterful sound, full-bloodedly conveyed in this remastering of 1969 tapes.
There is a major problem however. The music of the lesser Bachs (which virtually fills the second CD), especially as heard on this particular organ, is adequately served by Wilhelm Krumbach's rude vigour, and I wish this disc were available separately. But the first CD, a curious J. S. Bach collection, is not recommendable. Subtlety is not part of Krumbach's armoury: this must be some of the least well-informed and least stylishly articulated early music playing in Teldec's Das Alte Werk catalogue. The opening of the Fugue, BWV547 is quite perverse in phrasing and registrational treatment, to take just one example. Is there any chance of Teldec separating this pair of Siamese twins?`'