C.P.E. Bach: Symphonies

The vast corpus of music by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach remains only sporadically recorded and not really well understood, so the reissue by the Phoenix Edition label of these 1988 recordings from Capriccio is welcome. They're not ideal, marred by harsh, boxy church sound, with less than perfectly silky performances, but the music is worth getting into circulation once again. These symphonies date from the 1770s, during the later part of Bach's career, and in this two-CD set they're in reverse chronological order: the four ... Read More

The vast corpus of music by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach remains only sporadically recorded and not really well understood, so the reissue by the Phoenix Edition label of these 1988 recordings from Capriccio is welcome. They're not ideal, marred by harsh, boxy church sound, with less than perfectly silky performances, but the music is worth getting into circulation once again. These symphonies date from the 1770s, during the later part of Bach's career, and in this two-CD set they're in reverse chronological order: the four orchestral symphonies with 12 obbligato parts were published in 1780 in Hamburg, while the the Six symphonies for strings and continuo were commissioned in 1773 by the same Baron Gottfried van Swieten who stimulated some of Haydn's and Mozart's greatest works. Van Swieten urged Bach to give free rein to his imagination, not worrying about technical problems, and Bach obliged. All the symphonies are cut from the same cloth, with opening movements that careen through a series of... Read Less