Harpsichord

Bach is often credited with having invented the keyboard concerto, despite the fact that all of his works in the mode were arrangements of existing concertos for other instruments. Furthermore, whatever influence they may have had was indirect. It’s unlikely that either Haydn or Mozart had heard any of this music or even knew of its existence. But Haydn may have encountered the keyboard concertos of Carl Philippe Emanuel, and Mozart knew Johann Christian’s works in the genre. Nevertheless the elder Bach’s concertos, whether played on a harpsichord, or on a piano, retain a revered place in the keyboard literature.

Annelie de Man - Ladder of Escape 10: Contemporary Music for Harpsichord (2008) {Attacca 28120}
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© 2008 Attacca | 28120
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Avant-Garde / Modern Composition / Harpsichord

Let's have a little musical bipolarity. Elegant music by Couperin and Royer followed by this disc of modern works for harpsichord and various instruments. Voormolen's "Suite de Clavecin" is the most accessible work here, and my other favorite is Louis Andriessen's "Dubblespoor" for vibraphone, glockenspiel, celesta, vibraphone and harpsichord, also quite approachable. Then, we have a piece such as JacobTV's "Doggie Steps" for violin, cello, harpsichord and tape - the tape portion includes barking dogs, a few cats (which I like, it recalls the music of P. Bimmstein) and a female voice (I assume the harpsichordist) speaking about "taking doggy steps".

Eighteenth-century American harpsichord music isn't something you hear everyday, but the delightful sounds of Enlightenment in the New World can be appreciated by any keyboard lover. Using a French harpsichord built in 1774, Olivier Baumont performs lively (not to mention "enlightened") works by seldom-heard composers William Selby, Alexander Reinagle, Victor Pelissier, someone named simply Mr. Newman, and a few others. There's nothing monumental here–James Hewitt's "Yankee Doodle with 9 Variations" may be too silly to fully appreciate–but the playing is exquisite and there are some great discoveries.

Christophe Rousset is one of the finest and most exciting harpsichordists, and as a conductor is a leader in the late 20th century revival of French Baroque music. After studying piano as a boy, he became deeply interested in the harpsichord at the age of 13. He studied with Huguette Dreyfus at the Schola Cantorum in Paris and, from 1980 to 1983, with Bob van Asperen at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague. He won a special certificate of distinction at the Schola Cantorum and, in 1983, the first prize at the International Harpsichord Competition in Bruges.

In the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, two groups of sonatas composed for a violin and a harpsichord accompanying them can be distinguished. The first of these are works where the harpsichord plays only the role of basso continuo. The second group includes violin and harpsichord works in which Bach definitively breaks with the tradition of basso continuo, giving the two parties autonomous meaning. This category includes 6 Sonatas marked in the catalog of the composer's works with positions 1014 to 1019, of which the first three have been recorded on this record by excellent instrumentalists, Aleksandra Bryła and Maria Banaszkiewicz-Bryła. The unusual composition techniques employed by Bach reveal a somewhat different image of the composer, devoid of ordinary seriousness or severity.

The concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach for solo harpsichord and strings are some of the earliest, if not the very first, keyboard concertos. In all likelihood Bach wrote them for his own use (or that of his talented sons) – probably to be performed with Leipzig’s Collegium Musicum. The concertos’ fresh and exuberant character reflects how much Bach enjoyed the opportunity to engage with his fellow musicians, a quality that also came across on Masato Suzuki’s first installment of Bach's harpsichord concertos together with his colleagues in Bach Collegium Japan: ‘sparkling performances…