CPE Bach (Carl Philipp Emanuel)

[Bunny]

Has anybody here heard this one? It seems quite nice from the clips.

Although I don't have that, it has garnered excellent reviews.  I believe it got the 10/10 at Classicstoday.com, but I don't recall who reviewed it.  I have a number of recordings by the AAMB and they are all of high quality, although I don't have the Boccherini.  I especially love "Ouvertüren: Music for the Hamburg Opera" and  their recording of music by WF Bach.  Their recording of the Brandenburg Concertos is also very highly regarded, so I don't think you will go far wrong with this recording.

[Brian]

For what it's worth, Peter Bruns, the cellist on that hm Gold disc, is excellent. Haven't heard that album in particular, but I would definitely recommend his work.

[Que]

I find this repertoire by CPE addictive. Hope that BIS comes off with a box set soon!

Q

[SonicMan46]

   

I find this repertoire by CPE addictive. Hope that BIS comes off with a box set soon!

Q - can't find much @ all on Amazon USA, but the MDT Website has numerous Spanyi CPE Bachofferings on the BIS label - seems to be two different types of cover art - placed a couple above - appear to be different sets (one on clavichord & the other on tangent piano) - boy, a BOX set or two would indeed help!  Dave 

[Que]

Q - can't find much @ all on Amazon USA, but the MDT Website has numerous Spanyi CPE  Bachofferings on the BIS label - seems to be two different types of cover art - placed a couple above - appear to be different sets (one on clavichord & the other on tangent piano) - boy, a BOX set or two would indeed help!  Dave 

Dave. It's a series of concertos and another series with solo works! 

As to Amazon, click here.

Q

[SonicMan46]

Dave. It's a series of concertos and another series with solo works! 

As to Amazon, click here.

Q - thanks for the clarification! Also, thought that I entered the same search criteria that your link to Amazon USA demonstrates -    Well, sometimes just doesn't seem to return the same results - Dave 

[Lilas Pastia]

Dave. It's a series of concertos and another series with solo works! 

As to Amazon, click here.

Q

Both series are eminently collectible. CPE Bach and Boccherini are the greatest musicains between the Bach-Handel-Scarlatti axis and the Haydn-Mozart one. In many works, they prove to be totally worthy of that hallowed quintet. I've purchased many discs' worth of downloads from the BIS CPE Edition on eclassical's website. I'll stand in line to buy the whole caboodle when it's eventually issued. That BIS collection is one of the gramophone's gereat events (shades of London's Dorati Haydn symphonies series).

Edit: my take on Bruckner's 4-5 with Kempe MPO in the Bruckner Abbey - in a couple of hours 

[Que]

Interesting comments by André!

It seems that I'm having a CPE breakthrough lately. First the Magnificat and now the keyboard series with Spanyi. Just the wealth of period keyboard instruments: harpsichord, clavichord, tangent piano & fortepiano is simply irresistible!

And what about this quote on CPE by Paul Shoemaker on Musicweb?

Certainly I will never forget my introduction to this music, in the form of H 427. The University of Southern California student orchestra was conducted from the cembalo continuo by Ingolf Dahl, the cembalo concertato was played by Ronald Ratcliffe, and from the first notes I was utterly transported. I had been completely unaware that such magnificent music existed from the pen of C.P.E. Bach, and my feelings were so intensely aroused that I remember visualising the harpsichord as a boat borne upon the waves of violin bows as on a raging ocean. Naturally I immediately bought what LP recordings there were, and over the years there have been several of H. 427. Recordings available at the time of other concerti by C.P.E. Bach were usually disappointingly thin and uncommitted, but I also bought them anyway.

We are finally discovering what Mozart, Haydn, and Burney all told us: that C.P.E. Bach was a major composer. I believe that eventually his operas will become as popular as his keyboard concerti.

Q - now stop tempting me w/ those Spanyi CPE Bach discs!  You're driving me crazy!   

Now, how many have been published!  Dave 

Many, Dave, many! 

See here on Miklos Spanyi's website: 16 volumes of concertos and 18 volumes of solo keyboard to date! I've read somewhere that the total of concertos might be some 19 volumes, so still a few to go! Couldn't find more precise info on the BIS site.

It's a dilemma... Gorgeous music just discovered, but I guess we'll have to wait at least a few years (2-3?) before a box set emerges... So I decided to pick up some volumes whenever I see them as a bargain (just did) as a taster for the box set, whenever that will come.

Q

[SonicMan46]

Many, Dave, many! 

See here on Miklos Spanyi's website: 16 volumes of concertos and 18 volumes of solo keyboard to date! I've read somewhere that the total of concertos might be some 19 volumes, so still a few to go! Couldn't find more precise info on the BIS site.

It's a dilemma... Gorgeous music just discovered, but I guess we'll have to wait at least a few years (2-3?) before a box set emerges... So I decided to pick up some volumes whenever I see them as a bargain (just did) as a taster for the box set, whenever that will come.

Q

Boy, I did not realize that Carl PE Bach wrote THAT MUCH for keyboard (orchestral or solo) - just checked my CPE Bach collection and have nearly two dozen discs, but only two are devoted to the works in question - guess that I've been concentrating more on his Papa's keyboard output (which is not a bad idea!  ) -    Dave

[Lilas Pastia]

Right now listening to the glorious A major concerto (from Vol 7). And believe me, 'glorious' is not an hyperbole. This is absolutely the equal, if not more, of Mozart's E Flat concerto (no 9). The main difference is that CPE didn't encumber himself with curlicues and harmonic caramel. His was a direct, no-nonsense musical personality, with a clear penchant for the darker aspects of the musical affect: melancholy, drama, imperativeness and gravity. He didn't seem to have any patience for the more moody, or 'feminine' aspects.

Somewhere in the pile is the Magnificat, performed by Collegium Aureum. And the great Himmelfahrt Jesu oratorio. I haven't listened to it in some 30 years, so it will be a new voyage of discovery.

[Que]

So now that we have this "Classical" thing going!



Anyone that can comment on this recording? Thanks!

Q

[robnewman]

C.P.E. Bach (1714-1788)


Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach

Among his contemporaries Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach had the reputation of being a pleasant, sociable man with a gift for wordplay, who was not afraid of making critical remarks even to persons of high rank. He seldom took sides in musical controversies, but when he did he expressed himself vigorously; some light is shed on his own views by his comment, printed in the 'Hamburgischer Unpartheyischer Correspondent' of 20 September 1785, on an English newspaper report claiming that there was tension between him and Haydn: 'It is my belief that every master has his own true worth. Praise and blame can do nothing to alter it. The work alone allots praise or blame to the master, and I therefore take everyone as I find him'. He reacted angrily to criticism of his father and to the publication of unauthorized editions, vehemently attacking Birnstiel's edition of J.S. Bach's chorales and Rellstab's reprints of his own works issued when Rellstab took over the publishing firm of Emanuel's friend G.L. Winter. Nor did he conceal his dislike of the modern Italian music of the time, in particular of such excesses as the intrusion into sacred music of stylistic elements from comic opera. He also had a low opinion of the style developed by Johann Schobert and by his own half-brother Johann Christian.

Bach was a good businessman. Most of his publications were commercially successful, and indeed he preferred not to publish a work if he thought it unlikely to sell, as in the case of his 'Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu' in 1784. His business acumen was sometimes interpreted as avarice, but he was extremely generous to his friends and family, and would give them copies of his printed works and autograph manuscripts that he no longer needed, or let them have copies at cost price to himself. He took his half-brother Johann Christian into his family after their father's death and later did the same for his nephew Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst on the latter's return from England; he also provided regular financial support for his widowed half-sister Elisabeth Juliana Friederica. He was particularly close to his half-brother Johann Christoph Friedrich, exchanging sheet music with him on a regular basis.

Bach would often play for hours to visitors, his favourite instrument being a clavichord built by Gottfried Silbermann which he passed on to his pupil and friend Ewald von Grotthuss in 1781, together with the rondo Abschied von meinem Silbermannischen Claviere h272 (w66); Grotthuss responded with thanks in the form of a rondo composed by himself. Writing about rhetoric in his' Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments', Bach emphasized that the musician must be able to place himself in the same emotional state as he wishes to arouse in his hearers, and warned against mannerisms and exaggerations. When improvising he seemed quite enraptured; his playing as a whole was notable for its clarity and cantabile style, and left a lasting impression on his audience.

Like many other musicians and music lovers of the time, Bach owned a large collection of portraits of musicians, which he was always seeking to extend through purchase and exchange. He even toyed with the idea of publishing a catalogue of his collection, but that project was realized only after his death.

Concerto for two Harpsichords and Orchestra in F major Wq 46/3
Allegro assai
Musica Antiqua Koln
Andreas Staier

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMkzyiEu9NU

[val]

C P E Bach was one of the most important artists of the aesthetic movement called "Sturm und Drang", a sort of pre-romantic movement in the second half of the 18th century.
Within that aesthetic he composed the 6 Symphonies Wq 182 (1773) and the 4 Symphonies Wq 183 (1776), to me the most important Symphonies composed in the second half of the 18th century after those of Josef Haydn and Mozart.

The masterpiece of his chamber music are the Quartets for fortepiano, flute and viola, Wq 94/6.

Regarding the clavier music, the Fantasies and Sonatas included in the remarkable recording of Andreas Staier are a splendid example of his imagination. But the 6 Sonatas Wq 49 (1742) are perhaps his best and original works for harpsichord. 

[Mozart]

Has anyone heard CPE Bach's concerto for harpsichord and piano forte?

*I guess its just for 2 keyboards and my recording uses 1 harpsichord and 1 pf. mmm kinda interesting still

[Que]

Has anyone heard CPE Bach's concerto for harpsichord and piano forte?

*I guess its just for 2 keyboards and my recording uses 1 harpsichord and 1 pf. mmm kinda interesting still

Are you refering to the double concerto Wq 47? Great piece and intended for this combination, though also exists in an arrangement for two pianos.
Double concerto Wq 46 is for two harpsichords. I hope you have the DHM disc with both works by Gustav Leonhardt & Alan Curtis et al.

Q

[Mozart]

Are you refering to the double concerto Wq 47? Great piece and intended for this combination, though also exists in an arrangement for two pianos.
Double concerto Wq 46 is for two harpsichords. I hope you have the DHM disc with both works by Gustav Leonhardt & Alan Curtis et al.

Q

Hmm it has the number h 479

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Concerto in E Flat Major (H 479)

Double Concertos by Bach's Sons
by Gustav Leonhardt, Leonhardt-Consort and Concentus musicus Wien

here it is

http://www.7digital.com/artists/gustav-leonhardt-leonhardt-consort-and-concentus-musicus-wien/double-concertos-by-bachs-sons?partner=678

Let me make sure this is the one that used 1 piano and 1 harpsichord

Yes I guess it is the same cd you mentioned Q, but I was talking about CPE's concerto, really enjoyable performances.

[Que]

Yes I guess it is the same cd you mentioned Q, but I was talking about CPE's concerto, really enjoyable performances.

Same piece, but probably not the same disc!

Mine:



Yours!

 

Q

[Mozart]

YES! thats the one Q!

I am becoming obsessed with this concerto, its like half Vivaldi and half Haydn (=

[Que]

Yes boys and girls, a masterpiece by good old CPE!
Think a pre-Mozartian oratorio in CPE's style with "Empfindlichkeit" (sensibility/ expressiveness), think (p)reminiscent of the choral version of Haydn's Seven Last Words, which was composed nearly two decades later.
Recorded in 1986 with Barbara Schlick in her hayday, a very young but already superb Christoph Prégardien and the venerable Max van Egmond in top form. Sigiswald Kuijken at the helm of La Petite Bande. To sum up: we have a winner, strongly recommend to all "preclassicals"!

I'm picturing the recently reissued bargain version:




SAMPLES

Q

[Grazioso]

This set by Capriccio might be of interest:



(12 CD's for $45)