Briefly Noted: MAH takes on CPE

C.P.E. Bach, Sonatas and Rondos, Marc-André Hamelin (released on January 7, 2022) Hyperion CDA68368 | 141'01"

The keyboard music of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach can be a hard sell, often rendered either too understated or too flashy. It is music that tends to work best on instruments more like what the composer heard when he played it. Marc-André Hamelin has done something quite difficult, recording over two hours of selected pieces, mostly sonatas and rondos, on a Steinway last January and doing so with consummate style. Hamelin's impeccable virtuosity gives him the range of touch to capture the quicksilver emotional shifts in this music. For example, the varied movements of the Fantasia in C Major, with its comic back-and-forth of buffo repeated-note gestures, never descend into glibness. Hamelin approaches the more sentimental slow movements with equally earnest sincerity, which is also an advantage in the way he plays Liszt. It works so well because he wears his heart on his sleeve.

The best tracks on these two stellar discs are the curiosities, like the Sonata in E Minor, which is actually a five-movement suite of dances based on and quite reminiscent of his father's prelude-less French Suites. Another highlight is the Abschied von meinem Silbermannische Klaviere, in einem Rondo, a musical leave-taking of his beloved Silbermann clavichord, bequeathed to his pupil Ewald von Grotthuss in 1781. In one sign of how recently appreciation for this Bach son's music has come, this piece was not widely known until it was finally published in the 1980s. It explores the expressive possibilities of this gentle instrument, the contrasts of loud and soft, the pointed accents, even the ornamental vibrato effect possible on it, which Hamelin can only approximate.

Hamelin mines a number of odd character pieces for their beguiling quirks, vivid portraits of people who mostly cannot be identified. At first one wonders if the C Major Arioso with nine variations was worth including, but it heats up wonderfully around the charming fourth variation, set in the parallel minor. Hamelin delights in the circus-like tricks of the subsequent variations, too. Finally, added like encores are two miscellanea likely familiar to all denizens of after-school piano lessons: the rollicking Solfeggio in C Minor and the perky March in G Major (a piece of juvenilia, once wrongly attributed to the elder Bach, included in the Anna Magdalena Notebook).

Dip Your Ears No. 232 (Julian Steckel Galant Splendor)

Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach, Cello Concertos Julian Steckel (cello), Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Susanne von Gutzeit Hänssler Classic

Empty Noodle No More

Galant music – the musical period into which Bach’s sons fall – has a reputation of being empty frills and noodling excess: the tedious bridge between the blissful baroque and classical period. That’s partly because of our lack of familiarly with the style. Alas, the proposition to become familiar with the style, presumably consisting of spending endless hours over the course of years with that music, doesn’t seem a particularly appealing solution to the problem, either. Unless, of course, one gets to hear works like these CPE Bach Cello Concertos! ARD Music Competition Winner Julian Steckel presents them masterfully, in very lively and sensitive dialogue with the responsive, quick-fire Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. The A-minor concerto especially has a somber tone that even pre-shadows the romantic cello concertos to come. When it comes like this, Gallant music does, why then everyone should be happy to better get acquainted with the style.

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Forbes Classical CD Of The Week: C-P-Eppreciation! Or: The Rescue For Bach Junior

…What unexpected Joy! But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me lower expectations, first: The Gallant style wedged between late Baroque and the Classical style, of which Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach is one of the most prominent proponents, largely escapes our aesthetic. I remember well hearing a performance of his oratorio, Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu, at the Salzburg Mozart Week mini-festival. A veritable dream cast consisting of the Freiburger Barockorchester and RIAS Chamber Chorus under René Jacobs, with Miah Persson, Maximilian Schmitt and Michael Nagy on soloist duty. The occasion – such works and composers always need occasions – was the 300th anniversary of C.P.E. in 2014, and if anyone should have been able to make the reclusive value of Gallant music palatable to the ears of a modern audience, it should have been been them…

-> Classical CD Of The Week: C-P-Eppreciation! Or: The Rescue For Bach Junior

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C.P.E. Bach on Capitol Hill

Charles T. Downey, Sampling of C.P.E. Bach’s music at Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival
Washington Post, July 28, 2014

This year’s installment of the Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival opened with another observation of the tricentennial year of the birth of C.P.E. Bach. On Saturday night at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, flutist Jeffrey Cohan, violinist Marlisa del Cid Woods and harpsichordist Joseph Gascho offered a sampling of music by J.S. Bach’s most famous son.

Cohan performed on an 18th-century transverse flute... [Continue reading]

Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival
C.P.E. Bach Tricentennial
St. Mark's Episcopal Church

Ionarts-at-Large: Mozart-Woche 2014 (CPE Bach Oratorio)

In the current issue of AUDITORIUM:

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Briefly Noted: C.P.E. Bach

C.P.E. Bach, Heilig / Magnificat, E. Watts, W. Lehmkuhl, L. Odinius, M. Eiche, RIAS Kammerchor, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, H.-C. Rademann (released on February 11, 2014) Harmonia Mundi HM2167D | 55'32"

The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin was at the Library of Congress earlier this month, performing some instrumental music by C.P.E. Bach, part of that institution's observance of the 300th anniversary of the composer's birth. This recent disc provides a brief survey of some of C.P.E. Bach's sacred music, based on a concert the composer himself presented in Hamburg, where he was music director, on Palm Sunday (April 9) in 1786. It was a benefit concert, organized on behalf of a group of doctors who treated poor patients pro bono. After a first half focused on the two giants of the generation before him, his father, J.S. Bach, and Handel, the second half featured the pieces recorded on this disc, a sampling of C.P.E. Bach's compositional achievement: his 1749 setting of the Magnificat canticle, Heilig for double choir (composed in 1776, when C.P.E. was in Hamburg), and the first of his orchestral symphonies, Wq. 183, from 1780, the last set of his symphonies -- pioneering because of their independent treatment of a large wind section (more on this in the excellent booklet essay by Peter Wollny, of the Bach-Archiv in Leipzig). It is likely that C.P.E. composed the Magnificat, at the end of his service in Berlin, as an audition piece for his father's job in Leipzig, so it is no mistake that it ends with an extensive contrapuntal Sicut erat in principio, one of several demanding choral pieces sung with consummate clarity by the RIAS Kammerchor. The standout discovery among the quartet of soloists is mezzo-soprano Wiebke Lehmkuhl, who is nothing short of remarkable in the duet Deposuit potentes de sede (with tenor) and in the solo setting of the Suscepit Israel puerum suum, as well as in the brief Ariette Herr, wert, daß Scharen der Engel, which introduces the double-choir section of Heilig.

For those in the Washington area, this disc also provides a preview of an almost identical concert planned by Washington Bach Consort next month (May 4, 3 pm). You can listen to the recording and compare notes.

Akademie für alte Musik Berlin

C. P. E. Bach, Magnificat / Heilig ist Gott (motet), Akademie für alte Musik Berlin, RIAS Kammerchor, H.-C. Rademann (Harmonia Mundi, 2014) J. Christian Bach, Missa da Requiem / Miserere, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, RIAS Kammerchor, H.-C. Rademann (Harmonia Mundi, 2011) [Review]

Sometimes the attention from an anniversary year does not really change one's opinion about a composer's works. Such has been the case during the two-day concert series devoted to the music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach at the Library of Congress. The most famous Bach son's keyboard music was overshadowed by other works on a recital by American harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani. This was followed on Saturday night, in the performance by Akademie für alte Musik Berlin, by an upstaging of his symphonies by a delightful little barn-burner from the hand of his younger brother, Johann Christian Bach. As has struck me before, it is really C.P.E.'s concertos that are the most deserving of attention. This was borne out by the Akamus performance, their first in the area since their Washington debut at the Library of Congress in 2005, which might have been billed as the Xenia Löffler Show.

Löffler is the group's principal oboist, and as in their 2005 tour, her consummate musicianship and excellent command of a sometimes unruly instrument were featured in a concerto, this time by C.P.E. Bach (E-flat major, H. 468). In the first movement, the oboe is scored mostly with just cello and harpsichord, sometimes with light strings, meaning that Löffler could focus on beauty of sound, rather than volume. Two cadenzas (uncredited), in the first and second movements, were expressive and diverting, and the minor-mode second movement, in particular, featured the soloists's plangent shaping of the piece's beautiful melodies. The third movement featured some flawless passagework, too, with one key malfunction, from which Löffler recovered with graceful ease.

By contrast, C.P.E.'s fifth symphony (B minor, H. 661) seemed like not one of his best efforts, with some very high violin writing that sounded pinched here. Its three compact movements featured lots of rocketing violin doodles, strong bass lines, and violent contrasts of piano and forte -- and not much else. Two horn players came on the tour only to play the final piece on the program, a G minor symphony by Johann Christian Bach, a work that does everything the C.P.E. work does and does it better. The well-played horn parts, always reinforcing full tutti sections, were perhaps an unfair advantage, but the work does get bogged down in its middle movement, which felt like it needed some continuo decoration to liven things up.

Other Reviews: Joan Reinthaler, Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin celebrates C.P.E. Bach with a well-performed program (Washington Post, April 7)

The rest of the program was more familiar, beginning with the same J. S. Bach orchestral suite the group played here in 2005 (C major, BWV 1066). Again, the "trio" group in many of the second dances -- two oboes and bassoon, especially the latter -- distinguished itself, and the Forlane stood out for its whirling motif of very fast notes, as did the second Menuett, for its ultra-soft, legato rendition by strings alone. If the playing felt just a little rough at the start of the Bach, it had definitely smoothed itself out for the F major concerto grosso by Handel (op. 6/2, HWV 320). Two violinists, Georg Kallweit and Gudrun Engelhardt, took the solo parts in a double-treble texture that recalled Corelli, from Handel's time in Rome. The slow transitions, many of them in this piece, seemed a little drab, calling out for some Handelian improvisation at the keyboard, which it did not receive. A spirited encore, the final (fugal) movement of Haydn's third symphony -- composed in the early 1760s, the piece actually predates the music by the Bach sons on this program -- rounded out a fine evening of music.

The Library of Congress concert series shifts from early music to contemporary music this week, with the residency of British composer Oliver Knussen (April 7 to 12).

Mahan Esfahani

Charles T. Downey, Harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani’s alternately rousing, bland birthday tribute to C.P.E. Bach (Washington Post, April 7, 2014)

C. P. E. Bach, Württemberg Sonatas, M. Esfahani (Hyperion, 2014)

Mahan Esfahani came home Friday night, in a sense, to play a recital at the Library of Congress. The American harpsichordist, who grew up in Potomac, Md., offered a tribute to C.P.E. Bach, the son of J.S. Bach who was born 300 years ago last month. The program included only two sonatas by the birthday boy, paired with music by other members of his famous family and some unexpected choices, including a piece by Domenico Cimarosa as an encore.

Whenever the music offered fast-moving scales and figuration, as in J.S. Bach’s “Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue,” Esfahani ran with it, his agile fingers making remarkably clean and accurate contact with every key. By the last piece, C.P.E. Bach’s A minor “Württemberg” sonata (Wq. 49/1), though, both his hands and my ears had tired of dazzling runs. [Continue reading]

Mahan Esfahani, harpsichord
Music of C. P. E. Bach, others
Library of Congress

SEE ALSO:
Lloyd Grove, Reliable Source (Washington Post, February 23, 2000)

Mahan Esfahani, Leave us alone (The Iranian, October 11, 2003)

C. P. E. Bach's Symphonies for Strings

Read my review published today in the Style section of the Washington Post:

C. P. E. Bach, Six String Symphonies, The English Concert, T. Pinnock

Charles T. Downey, Ensemble plays dynamic set of string symphonies
Washington Post, September 21, 2010

The Vivaldi Project presented a rare concert devoted to the music of one of J.S. Bach's famous sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, on Sunday afternoon at National Presbyterian Church. This relatively recent addition to Washington's burgeoning early music scene played all six of the composer's string symphonies, W. 182, from his years as Kapellmeister in Hamburg.

Baron Gottfried van Swieten commissioned these pieces while he was Austrian ambassador to Hamburg, reportedly telling Bach not to be constrained by worries about whether musicians would struggle with the difficulty of what he wrote. The virtuosity of individual players in the Vivaldi Project was certainly not at issue, with the violinists under talented director Elizabeth Field mastering seemingly countless runs and spiraling figures. [Continue reading]

Vivaldi Project
C. P. E. Bach, Six Symphonies, W. 182 (see the new Complete Works Edition)
National Presbyterian Church