CPE BACH Württemberg Sonatas
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
Genre:
Instrumental
Label: Hyperion
Magazine Review Date: 02/2014
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 77
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: CDA67995
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
(6) Sonatas for Keyboard, 'Württemberg Sonatas' |
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Composer
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Composer Mahan Esfahani, Harpsichord |
Author: David Vickers
Esfahani’s booklet-note provides the listener with a convivial commentary in which he draws attention to CPE Bach’s ‘Janus-like musical personality’ – nowhere more apparent than in the juxtaposition of recitative-like introduction, an intricate Adagio non molto and an extrovertly contrapuntal conclusion in the final sonata (H36). It is apt that Esfahani plays on a copy of surviving instruments by the Berlin court instrument-builder Michael Mietke (from whom JS Bach bought a two-manual harpsichord for the Cöthen court in 1719). There is an unpredictable lute stop used briefly in the Andante of H30, a gentle exploitation of dissonances throughout the Adagio and Vivace of H33, and Haydnesque playfulness in the finale of H32. The elusive fusion of thematic intricacy, ‘Baroque’ rhetoric and ‘proto-Classical’ Sturm und Drang offered by the instrument are caught perfectly by Esfahani’s supple touch and disarming sense of rhetorical pacing.
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