Sophie Favier

There is no surviving autograph manuscript of Bach’s ‘English’ Suites, and for such a set of magnificent pieces, an important and well-loved part of the baroque keyboard ‘canon’, surprisingly little is known about its history. What we do know is that the suites are amongst Bach’s earlier works – probably written in the second decade of the eighteenth century – and that the appellation ‘English’ was not given to them until the 1750s. In order to understand these fascinating works on a deeper level, we have to appreciate the importance of dance in the cultural context of eighteenth-century Europe. As a social skill, the ability to dance correctly was considered so vital that every court had a Dancing Master, often French, who taught the different types of dances to aspiring courtiers.

Deutsche Grammophon's Simply Anne-Sophie is touted as "a unique collection of Anne-Sophie Mutter's incomparable Deutsche Grammophon recordings," it is simply one of several – Mutter Modern, Romance, and The Great Violin Concertos are among others Deutsche Grammophon has compiled from its extensive Mutter holdings from over the years. Simply Anne-Sophie has a greater chronological range than its predecessors as its earliest entries date from 1992 recordings made for the hit disc Carmen-Fantaisie and stretches through to some selections from Mutter Mozart: Violin Concertos, recorded at Abbey Road in 2005.