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1 CD -
VC 7 90806-2 - (p) 1990
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SYMPHONIES
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| Carl Philipp
Emanuel BACH (1714-1788) |
Symphony
in D major, Wq. 183/1 (H663) |
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10' 46" |
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Allegro di molto |
6' 14" |
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1
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- Largo
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1' 46" |
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2
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Presto
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2' 42" |
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3 |
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Symphony
in E flat major, Wq. 183/2 (H664) |
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9' 35" |
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Allegro di molto
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4' 14" |
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4
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Larghetto |
1' 27" |
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5
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Presto |
3' 53" |
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6 |
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Symphony
in F major, Wq. 183/3 (H665) |
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10' 37" |
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Allegro di molto |
5' 17" |
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7 |
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Larghetto
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2' 14" |
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8 |
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Presto |
3' 04" |
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9 |
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Symphony
in G major, Wq. 183/4 (H666) |
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11' 51" |
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Allegro assai |
3' 12" |
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10 |
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Poco andante
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5' 05" |
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11 |
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Presto |
3' 33" |
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12 |
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Symphony
No. 5 in B minor for Strings and
Harpsichord, Wq. 182 (H661) |
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11' 09" |
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Allegretto |
4' 01" |
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13 |
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Larghetto |
2' 26" |
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14 |
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Presto |
4' 26" |
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15 |
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ORCHESTRA
OF THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
- Alison Bury (Leader), Elizabeth
Walffisch, Susan Carpenter-Jacobs, Roy
Mowatt, Peter Lissauer, Marc Cooper, First
violins
- Marshall Marcus, Julie Miller, Pavlo
Beznosiuk, Paull Boucher, Nicola
Cleminson, Frances Turner. Second
violins
- Jan Schlapp, Annette Isserlis, Rosemary
Nalden, Jane Compton, Violas
- Susan Sheppard, Suki Towb, Timothy
Mason, Cellos
- Chi-chi Nwanoku, Double-bass
- Lisa Beznosiuk, Rachel Brown, Flutes
- Anthony Robson, Richard Earle, Oboes
- Jeremy Ward, Bassoon
- Anthony Halstead, Susan Dent, Horns
- John Toll, Harpsichord
Gustav LEONHARDT, conductor |
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Luogo
e data di registrazione |
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Abbey Road Studio No.
1, London (England) - Ottobre 1988
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Registrazione: live
/ studio |
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studio |
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Producer |
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Nick Parker
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Balance engineer
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Mark Vigars
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Executive
Producer
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Simon Foster
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Prima Edizione LP |
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Nessuna
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Prima Edizione CD |
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Virgin Classics | LC
7873 | VC 7 90806-2 | 1 CD -
durata 54' 15" | (p) 1990 | DDD |
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Cover Art
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View of Hamburg
(1750), Engraving by Peter Schenk
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Note |
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In
1767 I was summoned to
Hamburg as musical
director, replacing the
late Kapellmeister
Telemann. After repeated
amd most respectful
requests I was granted
leave by the King; and
His sister, Her Royal
Highness Princess
Amalia,
did me the honour of
appointing me as Her
personal Kapellmeister
on my departure.
From
C.P.E. Bach’s
Autobiographical Sketch,
translated by C.D.
Ebeling.
In
March 1768, Carl Phillip
Emanuel Bach
finally left his post as
court harpsichordist to
Frederick the Great in
Berlin and took up his
new position in Hamburg as
musical director
of the city’s five main
churches and Cantor of
the Johanneum School. He had
felt
increasingly stifled during
his thirty years in
Berlin, where the more
conservative music of
Graun, Hasse and Quantz was
preferred. By
contrast, Hamburg, a free
Hanseatic city with
a lively commercial and
intellectual life, offered
an altogether more
stimulating atmosphere.
The music historian Charles
Burney, who
visited Bach there in 1772,
and who left us one
of the most revealing
descriptions of the
composer, wrote of the city
that ‘there is an air
of chearfulness, industry,
plenty, and liberty,
in the inhabitants of this
place, seldom to be
seen in other parts of
Germany’.
Bach’s duties in Hamburg
resembled those
of his late father in
Leipzig. But although he
was responsible for the huge
quantity of music performed in
Hamburg’s churches
throughout
the year, as well as various
teaching activities
at the Johanneum, he was
able to delegate a
certain amount of his work,
and to make use of
existing music where
possible for church
performances. This enabled
him to take on a
wide range of other
activities, in particular
indulging his
entrepreneurial flair for
publishing and marketing his
own music, as
wellas reviving the city’s
concert life by giving
many performances as
keyboard soloist and
director.
Ten of Bach’s nineteen
symphonies date
from his Hamburg years and,
together with his
keyboard music, are among
his finest
achievements. The set of six
string symphonies
Wq.182 (1773) was
commissioned by one of
Bach’s numerous visitors,
Baron Gottfried van
Swieten, the Austrian
ambassador to Berlin
and connoisseur of the arts.
He had travelled
specially to Hamburg to meet
the composer,
and it was through him that
Bach’s music was heard in
Vienna, coming to the
attention of
Mozart and, later,
Beethoven. In his
commission, van Swieten
showed his
understanding of Bach’s
genius by requesting
that he give his musical
imagination a
completely free rein,
‘without regard to the
difficulties of execution
which were bound to
arise’. As a result, the six
works are virtuosic
showpieces, full of
sparkling invention, and
harmonic and dynamic shocks.
All of these
symphonies are in continuous
three-movement
form, with dramatic first
movements and
bipartite, often playful,
finales. The fifth
symphony is the only one in
a minor key, and
also differs in having a
particularly expressive
first movement and a more
dramatic finale,
with its unstable harmonies
producing a feeling
of restlessness.
The four ‘orchestral
symphonies in twelve
obbligato parts’ Wq.183 date
from 1775-6
and, unlike the 1773 set,
were written for
performance in Hamburg.
Scored for pairs of
horns, flutes and oboes,
bassoon, strings and
continuo, they seem to have
been designed to
be heard together, as a
letter written by the
poet Klopstock on 17 August
1776 suggests:
‘How often we wish you were
among us, my
dear Schénborn. Yesterday,
for example, when we heard four
new symphonies by Bach
performed by forty
instrumentalists.’ In their
treatment of the woodwind in
particular these
works look back to the
concerto grosso, but in
almost every other respect
they are forwardlooking.
Even more than in the six
string
symphonies, Bach turns his
back on the
doctrine of unified mood
(Affektenlehre )
towards the more expressive
world of the Sturm
und Drang. Expression, as
the late Carl
Dahlhaus has pointed out,
requires a fusion of
originality and
intelligibility, and it has
often
been said by Bach’s
contemporaries and by
more recent writers, that he
erred toward the
former. Certainly, the
continuous flow of
striking ideas, the use of
harmonic coups, a
wide dynamic range, and
sudden pauses to
engineer distant key changes
all have the
effect of clouding a sense
of form and giving
the impression of an
orchestral fantasia. But
the opening movement of the
D major
Symphony, for example, with
its gradually
intensifying syncopated
first subject, is in
clearcut sonata form. And
the use of a
continuousmovement plan with
often extensive
transitional passages
between first and second
movements, creates a unity
that remains both
challenging and satisfying.
Mark
Audus, 1990
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