W.f Bach

It must have been daunting for J.S Bach’s musical sons to work with his huge shadow. The fact that four of his children succeeded in becoming important and influential composers is both remarkable and proof of how extraordinary these men were. C.P.E and J.C Bach are perhaps the most famous of them, and of the other two, J.C.F and W.F, it is Wilhelm Friedemann (1710-84) who perhaps came closest to his father as a composer.

The literature of duets for oboe and flute, with no bass instrument, is not large, and in putting together an album's worth the veteran Swiss musicians Heinz Holliger (oboe) and Felix Renggli (flute) come up with a rather mixed bag of pieces. The good news is that they include some real finds and play them well. The three sonatas for oboe and flute of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach are taken from a group of six he composed at various times in his career, and you can see why this most Bachian of Bach's sons might have been attracted to the experiment. The outer movements of these sonatas are rigorously polyphonic, with the flute and oboe contributing textural variation in the manner of the different stops of an organ, but at a more intimate scale. It's a delightful effect.

For the 15th anniversary of Ensemble Diderot, and after forays into concertos and chamber music using larger forces, Johannes Pramsohler and his colleagues go back to the roots with a recording of their core repertoire: trio sonatas. Highly inventive works by Bach pupils Johann Gottlieb Goldberg and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach make for a programme in which the Diderots show their art with their trademark stylish and agile playing.

The well-known painting of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach reproduced on the cover of this CD must be one of the most immediately attractive composer portraits ever made. The wide-brimmed hat, the fur-lined coat, the wisp of steely hair and, above all, the reddened but unmistakably genial face (displaying, if I’m not mistaken, his father’s nose) suggest a man one would want to accompany straightaway to the nearest coffee-house. But Friedemann was actually a little more complex than that, both as a person who could be lazy and argumentative and as a talented musician torn between the styles of the late baroque and early classical periods, so it is perhaps no surprise to find that there is considerable variety in the music on this disc.

The musical world of the eighteenth-century court at Dresden is characterised by its diversity: Vivaldi, Hasse, Ristori and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach were all highly esteemed. The Zürcher Barockorchester perform selections from this demanding repertoire and successfully transport listeners to Dresden’s vibrant Augustan era.