Bach Ana Magdalena

The title Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach (German: Notenbüchlein für Anna Magdalena Bach) refers to either of two manuscript notebooks that the German Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach presented to his second wife, Anna Magdalena. Keyboard music (minuets, rondeaux, polonaises, chorales, sonatas, preludes, musettes, marches, gavottes) makes up most of both notebooks, and a few pieces for voice (songs, and arias) are included. The Notebooks provide a glimpse into the domestic music of the 18th century and the musical tastes of the Bach family.

Hailed by the international music press and highly praised by music connoisseurs, the recordings of Bach’s entire body of vocal music made by the Bach Collegium Japan (BCJ), its conductor Masaaki Suzuki and numerous prestigious soloists, many of whom have remained remarkably loyal to the undertaking from the outset, are here brought together to form the only complete set of these works in high-resolution format.

“This album is, in many ways, about love: the romantic love between husband and wife; familial love between parents and their children; and love for the Creator.”

As a follow up to Daniil Trifonov’s newest release BACH: The Art of Life, this Encore Edition includes a brand new variation by Daniil Trifonov – applying all the formal rigors of Bach’s design in the form of a Canon – giving the original motivic and harmonic invention a uniquely 21st Century sound.

The new recording from Magdalena Kožená features deeply-felt interpretations of sacred songs from the Baroque to the 20th Century.

In her album "Bach Unbuttoned", Ana de la Vega brings together a group of exciting young soloists and the Württemberg Kammerer Heilbronn to present a lively and fresh look at Bach as a person and composer.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was more systematic than many of his composer colleagues when it came to keeping track of his own works and made at least two catalogues of his compositions for solo keyboard. At various times he also destroyed manuscripts that remained in his possession, especially those of early works. But even so, there are a number of pieces that slipped through the net, and several of them can be found on this album. A few of them were included anonymously into the second Clavierbuchlein for Anna Magdalena Bach, while Emanuel Bach was still living in his father’s home in Leipzig.

Fresh off the heels of his revelatory period-instrument recording of the complete Beethoven Sonatas and Variations with Christopher O’Riley, Beethoven, Period., Haimovitz releases J.S. Bach: The Cello Suites according to Anna Magdalena on baroque cello and cello piccolo, the five-string instrument for which Bach’s Suite VI was likely intended.

Domestic music-making of a distinctly superior sort is lovingly recreated in a rare recording of the notebooks Bach presented to his second wife.

Domestic music-making of a distinctly superior sort is lovingly recreated in a rare recording of the notebooks Bach presented to his second wife.