CPE Bach Flute Sonatas (Trios/Solo/Piano Fantasia)
Alpha has released a new album featuring flute sonatas by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, son of the most famous Bach, Johann Sebastian.
I’ve liked both the playing of François Lazarevitch and Justin Taylor before so my expectations for this album were high. Six works are presented, generously, pushing the bounds of what can fit onto a CD. The booklet notes do well to point out the confluence of stylistic options that Bach found himself willing to exploit across his compositional career. As the notes point out, these can be set as somewhat polar opposites: Empfindsamkeit and Sturm und Drang. The first might be best considered a sentimental style, which I often equate in my mind with the carefully wrought melodic phrases in what’s clearly a new galant style. This style really puts a melodic line front and center in a way that eschewed the seemingly more formal style focused on counterpoint so central of his father’s writing. As we might expect, there is plenty of opportunity Bach takes advantage of when writing for the flute to engage in this style of writing.
Compare, if you will the second movement Largo from the album’s first work, the trio sonata in d minor, Wq. 145 with the third movement of the a minor solo sonata, Wq. 132. Despite their numbering, the solo work was written later and the third movement is of course somewhat reminiscent of the J.S. Bach solo partita. The style is far less melodic and with the repetition of notes evokes the earliest baroque stilo concitato as its delicate, yet bonafide reference to stress and storm.
One may notice right away that Taylor uses a piano with his duets with Lazarevitch. Practically speaking, in Bach’s time there likely wouldn’t have been any fuss made over switching between instruments. At this point in our modern appraisal of baroque performance practice, I think it’s time more keyboardists explore late baroque and early classical repertoire on fortepiano. Even Bach’s father performed on piano, having been quoted that he liked some of the new pianos he was able to try. I like the balance the two have found, and Taylor I felt does a good job at providing musically satisfying dynamic contrasts without going abandoning the early classical style. Probably more than some other recordings of CPE Bach by my memory, Taylor’s piano is more upfront in the acoustic presentation of the duet and I like its role as an equal partner treated with the same acoustic prominence as the flute.
The music is not a set I am ultimately familiar with and so being exposed to some new pieces was a fun experience. There is a quality to CPE’s writing that doesn’t betray the high standard of composition forged by his father. My favorite piece, maybe for stylistic reasons, was the last trio that was originally scored for violin, flute, and piano, but here is realized again as a trio as with some of the other works, with Taylor taking up the second melody in his right hand. Such was the example that father Bach had come up with for his “trios” for violin and harpsichord.
Again, for style, compare the last movement on disc of the Presto from Wq. 143, with its clear baroque origins, with that of the F# minor Fantasia for piano, that ultimately gives Lazarevitch a rest. It’s what makes Bach’s music so interesting, at a period as new stylistic possibilities were being explored. If for no other reason, the inclusion of this sonata (or fantasia, as Bach calls it), speaks to the benefit from his newer writing style to include a piano with all it brings in terms of dynamic shading. To think what his audience would have thought of such a work!
All around, an enjoyable recital and adaptation of works that demonstrates Lazarevitch’s continued dominance as one of the world’s leading early flautists with the remarkably diverse playbook left to us by Bach’s eldest son and most famous progeny.
