Johann Kuhnau was Bach’s predecessor at Leipzig and one of the most imaginative of the Lutheran organist-composers of the generation before Bach. He seems to have been the composer of the earliest German keyboard ‘sonata’ which he included among the pieces of his Neue ClavierUbung (1692); but of far greater interest are the later sonatas contained in the Frische Clavier Fruchte (“Fresh Keyboard Fruits”) of 1696 and the Musicalische Vorstellung einiger biblischer Historien (“Musical Representation of Several Biblical Stories”) of 1700. The Musicalische Vorstellung was not, of course, by any means the earliest excursion into the field of keyboard programme music but it was, as John Butt remarks in his introductory note, the first collection to present a detailed narrative commentary. These biblical texts are written in Italian with German translations of each story.
Thankfully Harmonia Mundi have resisted any temptation to have the narrations read aloud on disc between every individual section. That was once tried on an elderly Teldec recording with Gustav Leonhardt, and very tedious it was, too. What Harmonia Mundi have done is to provide the original texts in translation under each Sonata heading. It isn’t quite like seeing the text written into the notation as Kuhnau arranged it, but on balance it seems the least intrusive solution. Butt, unlike two predecessors in the field, Leonhardt and Colin Tilney (Philharmonic, 1/61 – nla), plays the sonatas on three instruments, organ, harpsichord and clavichord. The notion is a good one, for not only does the character and form of the music often lend itself more readily to one of these than to another, but it also provides effective variety of colour for the listener. The instruments, all modern ones built after suitable models, sound very well; I have an especial liking for the organ, a superb instrument by Greg Harrold in the University of California in Berkeley.
Butt’s playing is fluent, rhetorical and virtuosic and he makes more sense of these extraordinary, often theatrical pieces than I have previously experienced. The music is full of fantasy, symbol and gesture and Kuhnau requires more than cursory aural reception on the part of his audience. The programme is perhaps going to appeal, above all, to keyboard players but I would urge readers with wider baroque sympathies to become acquainted with these works. A stimulating release.'