C. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

Are you ready for extreme 18th century keyboard? The typically sparse packaging graphics of this ECM release may indicate only to German speakers what's contained inside: a "Tangentenflügel" is a tangent piano, a rare keyboard instrument of Mozart's time that used hammers, striking the strings at a tangent, but no dampers. The sound combines qualities of a clavichord (its nearest relative, but the tangent piano is louder), a fortepiano, and a harpsichord.

CPE Bach (second son of JSB) offers so much more than eccentricity and in this recital of five sonatas Danny Driver, a recent addition to Hyperion’s bejewelled roster of pianists, makes his superlative case for music that is as inventive as it is unsettling. Playing with imperturbable authority, he captures all of the mercurial fits and starts of the G minor Sonata (H47) – almost as if Bach were unable to decide on his direction. And here, in particular, you sense Haydn’s delight rather than censure in such a startling and adventurous journey. The strange, gawky nature of the third movement even anticipates Schumann’s wilder dreams and, dare I say it, is like a prophecy of Marc-André Hamelin’s trickery in his wicked take on Scarlatti (also on Hyperion, 12/01). Again, the beguiling solace of the central Adagio is enlivened with sufficient forward-looking dissonance to take it somehow out of time and place. In the Adagio of the A major Sonata (H29) gaiety quickly collapses into a Feste-like melancholy, though even Shakespeare’s clown hardly sings more disquietingly of life’s difficulties. The finale from the same Sonata has a mischievous feline delicacy; and if the last three sonatas on this recital are more conventional, they are still subject to all of Bach’s mood-swings

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788) was a German musician and composer; and the second of five sons of Johann Sebastian Bach and his frist wife, Maria Barbara Bach. He is considered to be one of the founders of the Classical style, composing in the Rococo and Classical periods.

It was not always easy in the 18th century for a composer to remain true to himself on compositional, aesthetic and formal grounds, while at the same time fulfilling the requirements of his position as a princely court musician. This can be seen in this comment by Bach: ”Because I have had to compose most of my works for specific individuals and for the public, I have always been more restrained in them than in the few pieces that I have written merely for myself” (The Autobiography, written for the German translation of Charles Burney’s The Present State of Music in Germany … London, 1773—see: Carl Burney, Tagebuch seiner musikalischen Reisen Vol. 3, Hamburg, 1773).

Carl Philipp Emanuel was the most famous and successful son of the great Johann Sebastian. He was a protagonist of the Empfindsame Stil, intended to express true and natural feelings, featuring sudden contrasts of mood en emotions. This is especially applicable to the sets of variations for keyboard, in which the composer lets his imagination free reign, varying from purely ornamental variations of an instrumental/technical nature, to the complete change of character.

Like his older brother Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach received his musical training from the most exacting of teachers, and there is no doubt that, with the experience of the Trio sonatas for organ and Das wohltemperierte Clavier, both became admirable keyboard players.

A portrait, on the tercentenary of the composer's birth, of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788), probably the most gifted of the sons of Johann Sebastian Bach. Highly admired in his own century by Haydn, Gluck and Mozart, he stands out today as a brilliant and highly original composer. For CPE Bach, music had to be an expression of personal feelings and to achieve his aim, he revolutionised the established principles of form, harmony and rhythm.