Bach, Viola

Internationally respected musicians Daniel Palmizio (viola) and Nicolas van Poucke (piano) join forces in a double-album featuring Bach's complete gamba sonatas and Brahms two clarinet sonatas. Palmizio (recently described as a player of 'instrumental mastery' characterized by 'unselfconscious refinement') and Van Poucke ('a truly poetic musician') met at a festival in Zeeland, The Netherlands and have since worked together for several years. This album is the fruit of a deep friendship and shared love for music. Their approach to the music of both Bach and Brahms is equally steeped in tradition of the virtuosos of the golden era as it is forward looking and original. On a 17th century Testore (equipped with open gut strings) and a modern Steinway, Palmizio and Van Poucke, uncompromising in expressive intensity and counter-punctual clarity, shine a new bright light on sonatas by Bach and Brahms.

J.S. Bach’s Inventions and Sinfonias, BWV 772–801 are some of the most frequently played keyboard works in the history of music, appearing not only in concert but as part of the essential training of any pianist or harpsichordist, and they are models of Bachian contrapuntal procedures (and compositional procedures more generally), thus being also highly suitable for performance by groups of different instruments, as demonstrated on this recording. The collection comprises 30 pieces – 15 two-part Inventions and 15 three-part Sinfonias, and originally appeared in the collection known as the Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, written for the composer’s eldest son and dating from 1720 and in which they are entitled Praeambula and Fantasiae. Wilhelm Friedemann studied the organ from 1723 until he was appointed organist in 1733 at the Sophienkirche in Dresden.

The world of music has some resemblance with the natural world. Just as happens in nature with living beings, but at a much quicker pace, musical instruments, genres and styles are created, offered to the public, and then may succeed or not in conquering a place in the musical world. Success and popularity, furthermore, can be fleeting or stable, and their object, in turn, may remain more or less the same for a long time, or evolve. It is not always clear why a particular instrument or genre gains recognition, and another does not; instruments with beautiful timbres fail to survive, and others which are not substantially better become extremely widespread.

This album is a story of family and friendship. Positioned between homage to a father figure and modernity, the viola da gamba sonatas of Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian Bach are a revealing element in the history of the Bach family and its ties of friendship with two families of virtuoso instrumentalists, the Abels and the Hesses, who had already inspired the work of Johann Sebastian.