Luogo e data di registrazione		Schloß Wannegem-Lede (Berlgien) - 15/17 maggio 1974
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Recording Supervision		Dr. Thomas Gallia | Paul Dery
	Engineer		Sonart, Milano
	Prima Edizione LP		Harmonia Mundi (Basf) | 20 22225-3 | 1 LP - durata 46' 26" | (p) 1974
	Edizione CD		Deutsche Harmonia Mundi | LC 00761 | GD 77044 | 1 CD - durata 46' 26" | (c) 1989 | ADD
	Cover Art		-
	Note		-

Bach probably wrote his three sonatas for viola da gamba and cembalo between 1717 and 1723, while he was Kapellmeister at the Cöthen court. The reasons are clear: Bach's employer, Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen, was himself an amateur gamba player. Bach was probably thinking of him when he included two obbligato viola da gamba parts in the 6th Brandenburg Concerto. Solo sonatas for the Prince's favourite instrument were an obvious bonus. In the six years at Cöthen - when Bach was in his middle thirties - most of the instrumental works came into being: sonatas and concertos in the Italian style, and suites in the French style for different instruments in addition to the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier. All forms of instrumental music current at the period were tried out, to explore their limits in ever new and different ways. Bach's tremendous imagination reveals itself in his capacity to react to, and transform, existing forms, as even his contemporaries recognized. Indeed, even he was cantor at St. Thomas in Leipzig - and this is particularly true of his instrumental music - Bach nowhere broke out of the established musical forms of his time, although he was able in the partitas, variations and fugues of the later period to create a musical world which combined mathematical rules of proportion, cabbalistic number-play, the greatest freedom of invention, daring harmonic progression and depth of expression. But thus far - in Cöthen - these limits have not yet been reached. The traditional forms of the "sonata da chiesa" with its four movements (slow - fast - slow - fast) and the "concerto" (on Vivaldi's model) with its three movements (fast - slow - fast) provide a basis in the gamba sonatas for inventive trio playing. The G major sonata, however, must be placed somewhat earlier, particularly since it finds an earlier form in the sonata for two flutes and bass. The viola da gamba has taken over the part of the second flute; the transposition down an octave makes the overall sound more transparent. The two other sonatas appear more modern; the D major, because, especially in the second and fourth movements, it most strongly breaks through the principle pf the "trio", and the G minor, because in it the three-movement concerto form has been reached. Otherwise, in some of their rhythmic figurations and in their instrumental treatment, both sonatas are reminiscent of the 3rd and 5th Brandenburg concertos, which helps to settle the question of when they were written with some precision. Particular attention is drawn to a reminiscence of the third movement of the D minor cembalo concerto in the first movement of the G minor sonata. But all these points are of a formal kind. If one thinks of the early organ works, bristling with genius, which were able to put a congregation in confusion and which so much disturbed the church elders in Arnstadt, and if one remembers the timeless works of the later period, which surge like erratic blocks of highly intellectual art into a period characterized by a "style galant", then we must regard our three sonatas, like the Brandenburg concertos, as being "up to date". With their mixture of elegance and thoroughness, they make room for music which was intended to "delight the soul" and was, for the connoisseur, simultaneously "practice" and "galanterie". W. W.