Bach, Viola

The Father, the Son and the Godfather is a snapshot of a time when composers were offered a tremendous freedom in their choices of genres and styles and features three composers who knew each other well: J.S. Bach (the father), C.P.E. Bach (the son) and Georg Philipp Telemann (CPE’s godfather). We thus get Johann Sebastian’s rigorous, intellectually demanding Sonata in B minor, ample examples of the elegant and tender Empfindsamer Stil of his son C.P.E., and in two Trio Sonatas a taste of Telemann’s ‘world music’.

Playing together while retaining each other’s individuality: this could be the motto of Margaux Blanchard and Diego Ares, who have produced a renewed interpretation of an iconic repertoire for viola da gamba and harpsichord. Three sonatas that crown Johann Sebastian Bach’s affection for these two instruments.

Ten years after her acclaimed album Solo with the first two cello suites of Johann Sebastian Bach, violist Tabea Zimmermann now sets her sights on Suites Nos. 3 and 4. She pairs them with excerpts from György Kurtág's cycle Games, Signs & Messages , selecting six numbers to form her own personal homage to Bach.

This disc contains some sonatas for wind instruments by Johann Sebastian Bach from his years in Weimar (1708-17) and Cöthen (1717-23), having in common – as they have come down to us or as several musicologists have proposed – their being intended for the recorder and/or the oboe. The interchangeability of instrumentation, linked to different creative periods, to practical contingencies, and to the inexhaustible desire for perfection that induced the genius of Eisenach, according to the testimony of his earliest biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel, to continually revise his own works, often makes it difficult to go beyond their sterile catalogue dates in tracing their evolution. For this reason an experimental approach was chosen here, to bring back to their presumably original state what today is a handful of works, which were part of a much larger repertory. Chamber music was becoming the composer’s principal occupation in the time period under consideration, which was decisive in the progress of Bach’s career from organist to Konzertmeister (1714) and then to Kapellmeister of a Calvinist court (1717) essentially devoted to the cultivation of secular music.

It was with three of Bach’s cello suites, transcribed for the viola, that Maxim Rysanov made his début on BIS in 2010. The Sunday Times had one reservation: ‘Rysanov’s recording of Bach’s suites is near perfection; the only flaw being that he did not perform all six.’ With the present disc that flaw is now being rectified, and the set is complete.