Sophie Yates

Johann Christian Bach's sonatas belong so much to the domain of the fortepianist that we forget how terrific they can sound on the harpsichord; they are by turns rhythmically engaging, almost jazzy, witty, sparkling, and expressive. By most accounts Bach played both instruments with equal facility and did not leave us a stated preference for one over the other, indeed if he had one. Sophie Yates has done very well to remind us with her superb Chandos recording Johann Christian Bach: Six Sonatas, Op. 5, that the London Bach need not be heard on fortepiano to be experienced to his best advantage; one may make the case that Bach's sonatas benefit to some extent from the brightness of the older instrument. Yates is the first artist to record Bach's Op. 5 as a set on the harpsichord; the only other complete recording of Op. 5 has been done on fortepiano, yet these sonatas are most commonly heard individually or mixed up with the later, "Welcker" Sonatas, Op. 17. Although they are difficult to individually date, Bach's Op. 5 was published in 1766 and all six are thought to date from his first four years in London; in her notes, Yates correctly observes the impact of Thomas Arne on Bach's style and of the general English approach to melody. Luckily in Bach's case the Italian manner had already held sway for some time by his arrival in London in 1762, so the learning curve was not a tough road to hoe for the Padre Martini-educated master.

This collection of 18th century harpsichord music brings together works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Jacques Duphly, Francois Couperin, Jean-Philippe Rameau, George Frederic Handel, Louis-Claude Daquin, and Guiseppe Domenico Scarlatti. The pieces go together nicely, not least because of the way in which Sophie Yates plays them.

The Spanish and Portuguese influence in Domenico Scarlatti’s rhythms and, perhaps to a lesser extent, melodies are distinctive features of his keyboard style. Sophie Yates has chosen these evocative gestures in Scarlatti’s sonatas as determining characteristics of her recital Fandango – Scarlatti in Iberia. In fact, only four of the 13 items in her programme are by Scarlatti himself, the remaining pieces being by José Larrañaga, Seixas, Sebastian Albero y Añaños, and Soler, whose colourful ‘Fandango’ concludes her disc. Readers who know their Scarlatti will not need to be reminded either of the bold originality or of the wonderful variety of colours and sentiments present in his harpsichord sonatas.

The New Grove Dictionary has entries on 10 musically active members of the Couperin dynasty, of whom Armand-Louis is, chronologically speaking, the eighth. Born in 1725, he was the son of one of the great François Couperin’s cousins, and held a number of organ posts in Paris, including the virtually family-owned one of St Gervais, on the way to Vespers at which he was killed in a road accident just a few months before the Revolution. According to accounts he was a likeable man whose life was led free from strife and uncorrupted by ambition, and it is not fanciful to say that such are the qualities which inform his harpsichord music. Mostly rather rangy character pieces, though with a sprinkling of dances, they show the bold textural richness of the later French harpsichordist-composers, if without the galloping imagination of figures such as Rameau, Balbastre or Royer. Instead, they prefer to inhabit a contented rococo world, into which they bring considerable professional polish. If that makes the pieces sound predominantly ‘pleasant’, well, so they are… as agreeable a body of solo harpsichord music as any. But they are not vapid and neither are they easy, and we can be grateful that this selection has fallen to a player as technically assured and as musically sympathetic as Sophie Yates.

Collections of Baroque keyboard music are often focused on famous French and German composers, so there's comparatively little available on CD of English harpsichord music of the 18th century, aside from recordings of works by Henry Purcell and George Frederick Handel. Considering the rarity of its material, Sophie Yates' 2016 album on Chaconne, The Pleasures of the Imagination, holds a certain appeal because its selections haven't been dulled by excessive anthologizing. While some of the composers' names may ring a bell, such as John Blow, Jeremiah Clarke, Thomas Arne, and Johann Christian Bach (the "London Bach"), their contributions here will be unknown to most listeners, while William Croft, Maurice Greene, and Richard Jones are known only to specialists in the period.

Sophie Yates follows her French and Iberian collections (11/93 and 11/94) with an English one, an overview of the period that ended in the 1620s after the death of Byrd, its central figure, Gibbons and Bull, though Tomkins delayed the stylistic rigor mortis for another 30 years. The anonymous My Lady Carey's Dompe and Aston's Hornepype provide quasi-improvisational precursors (though they are not so placed in the programme) of the ubiquitous divisions upon whatever, including Byrd's or Aston's Ground – he looked both backwards to Aston and sideways to Dowland and Harding in writing divisions on their works.

Sophie Yates began her career by winning the international Erwin Bodky Competition at the Boston Early Music Festival, and as a result she was invited to tour and broadcast throughout the eastern states of America. She now performs regularly around Europe, the United States and Japan, and has also worked in Syria, Morocco and Western Australia. Known for her affinity with the French baroque, the music of the Iberian Peninsula and English virginals music, she has performed on most of the playable virginals surviving in Britain and is working on a long-term project to collect a book of contemporary English pieces for this instrument.

With the exception of the final Chaconne of the second set, these discs contain the two sets of suites of 1720 and 1733 which are Handel’s most important keyboard music. It is an impressive achievement, with stylish harpsichord playing and a real sense of the energy and originality of these works. Repeats are taken, mostly with sensible ornamentation which never strays into tastelessness or exaggeration, and notes inégales are introduced in small amounts, especially in the allemandes, and with commendable moderation – a good thing, since we have little evidence about the extent to which Handel was influenced by this practice.