W.F. Bach N

Bach Overture,BWV1070 - W.F. Bach Sinfonia,F64 - Sinfonia,F65 - Sinfonia, 'Dissonance',F67 - Ertönet, ihr seligen Völker,F88 - Sinfonia Wo geht die Lebensreise hin,F91 - Sinfonia O Wunder, wer kann dieses fassen,F92 - Sinfonia

CPE Bach Chamber Orchestra/Hartmut Haenchen

Berlin Classics     BC1098-2 (65 minutes : DDD)

Reviewed: Gramophone (5/1994)
 
Hartmut Haenchen, who has laboured valiantly to reconstruct some of the music here from scores rendered almost indecipherable by damp (the example illustrated is horrific), claims that ""the present CD brings together all Friedemann Bach's extant orchestral works for the first time"". Certainly three brief sinfonias from cantatas (F88, 91 and 92) do receive their first recording here, and two nine-minute others (F64 and 65) are each represented in the catalogue only by one alternative version (though previous recordings have been deleted); but Eugene Helm's worklist in Grove shows another half-dozen sinfonias that are available in print. However, let us not look gift-horses in the mouth: the present works illustrate a composer whose distinctive originality and vitality have been less generally recognized than those of his younger brother Carl Philipp Emanuel, but who also inherited some of his illustrious father's contrapuntal skill. This is readily seen in the strange F88, the flow of whose stretto counterpoint is interrupted every so often by abrupt rhythmic outbursts, and even more in the long lively fugue of F65, which is preceded by a very fine mournful Adagio featuring two flutes.
Friedemann's propensity for the wind is also exemplified in the cheerful F64—prominent horns in the first movement, two flutes again in the Andante—and F91, the sinfonia to an Ascension cantata with triumphant trumpets and oboes. The exuberant finale to F64 is a joy, as is the skittish Allegro of F67, whose opening Vivace is full of angularities and unexpected phrase-shapes. The chamber orchestra named after Friedemann's brother plays throughout with splendid alertness and brio: it employs modern instruments, but with an awareness of eighteenth-century style—down to embellishing the G minor Suite once credited (however implausibly) to Johann Sebastian. The recording, just a trifle bass-heavy, was made in the bright acoustic of the Jesus-Christus Kirche in Dahlem."