Customer Reviews

C.P.E. Bach: Sonatas and Rondos

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As a Bach-sons devotee I am constantly searching for enlightening performances of their music. CPE, in particular, exhibits many idiosyncratic style features that remind me of JS's dramatic toccatas and JC's singing-allegro melodicism. In my view, Hinterhuber carefully balances the contrasts with moments of intense intimacy. Unlike with so many recordings of 18th-century keyboard music from JS Bach to Mozart, Hinterhuber avoids the uber-elegant gracefulness that often overlooks the early-classic style subtlties and ambiguity. His playing is fully aware of every phrase turn and style juxtaposition. If you have listened to the Bach Partitas or Mozart and Haydn Sonatas ad nauseam for lack of more repertoire, get this disc.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was a kind of musical rebel in that he rejected the tenets of his father, old Johann Sebastian, and struck out on his own musically rather wayward-seeming path. Of course, in truth, his way was the newest thing and extremely popular in its day. He even became, at an early age, the court harpsichordist-composer at the court of Frederick the Great, a hotbed of Enlightenment activity. And in his day his music was much more popular than that of his fusty old dad. He was part of that group of composers who broke away from contrapuntal baroque composition and began something called the 'empfindsamer Stil.' That's a term difficult to translate precisely but it means something like 'sensitive, or sentimental, style.' One of this music's characteristics is that it wore its feelings on its sleeve, and was almost manic-depressive in its rapid cycling of moods. What sounded to the ears of the older generation like formless rhapsodizing became the foundation for what later was tamed and formalized in the music of Haydn. But even more, it led the way to the further emotionality of the Romantics like Beethoven, Berlioz, Chopin and Schumann.

On this CD is a representative sampling of the keyboard music written by Carl Bach. One can hear the sudden starts and stops, the surprising harmonies, the awkward-sounding juxtapositions. It is characterized by marvelous melodies, almost no counterpoint, wild dynamic contrasts. We hear four sonatas (in D minor, F sharp minor, A major and C major), two rondos (in D minor and B flat major) and the particularly lovely Cantabile in B minor from the Sonata, Wq.55/3 (H. 245). The pianist is Christopher Hinterhuber, a young Austrian earlier heard to great advantage on excellent CDs of four-hand Schubert piano music (with Rico Gulda, Friedrich's son), and of piano concerti by Ferdinand Ries. His playing here is technically assured and he certainly seems to get into the wild spirit of this music. Unfortunately, to my perhaps tin ear the sound of the recorded piano is a bit thin and almost clangy at times; I had to check the booklet to make sure Hinterhuber wasn't playing on a fortepiano or Hammerflügel. Still, this is a wonderful introduction for anyone who has never been exposed to the quirky music of CPE Bach, and at this price Naxos makes it easy to hear some possibly heretofore unexplored repertoire.

Scott Morrison

and very brillant and neat performance! As much as I am concerned, Hinterhuber's playig is more exciting than M.Pletnev's C.P.E.Bach.