musica Dei donum
CD reviews
Carl Philipp Emanuel BACH (1714 - 1788): Keyboard works
[I] "Sonatas with varied reprises, Wq 50"
Tom Beghin, clavichord
rec: April 2 - 4, 2024, Mechelen, Motormusic
Evil Penguin Classic - EPRC 0066 (© 2024) (74'39" / 74'49")
Liner-notes: E
Cover & track-list
Spotify
Sonata in F (Wq 50,1 / H 136);
Sonata II in G (Wq 50,2 / H 137);
Sonata III in a minor (Wq 50,3 / H 138);
Sonata IV in d minor (Wq 50,4 / H 139);
Sonata V in B flat (Wq 50,5 / H 126);
Sonata VI in c minor (Wq 50,6 / H 140)
[II] "Fantasias"
Aapo Häkkinen, clavichorda, fortepianob
rec: June 20 - 22, 2022, Pitäjänmäen kyläkirkko (FI)
Brilliant Classics - 96567 (© 2023) (75'52")
Liner-notes: E
Cover, track-list & booklet
Spotify
Carl Philipp Emanuel BACH:
Fantasia and fugue in c minor (Wq 119,7 / H 75,5)a;
Fantasia and fugue in d minor (Wq deest / H 349)a;
Fantasia in D (Wq 117,14 / H 160)b;
Fantasia in E flat (Wq deest / H 348)b;
Fantasia in f sharp minor 'C.P.E. Bachs Empfindungen' (Wq 67 / H 300)a;
Fantasia in g minor (Wq 117,13 / H 225)b;
Rondo in e minor 'Abschied von meinem Silbermannischen Claviere' (Wq 66 / H 272)a;
Sonata in f minor (Wq 63,6 / H 75)a [1];
Johann Sebastian BACH (1685-1750):
Chromatic fantasia and fugue in d minor (BWV 903) (version JN Forkel)a
Sources:
[1] 18 Probestücke in 6 Sonaten, 1753
Scores
In the course of the 18th century the bourgoisie played an increasingly important role in music life across Europe. Middle-class amateurs liked to play music in their salons, and this resulted in a growing market for music that was interesting to play but technically not too difficult. Composers met this need by writing and publishing music that was within their grasp. However, amateurs also needed instructions on how to play instruments, and about the way they should play the music written for them. This resulted in a large number of treatises that were published during the century. This was also an expression of the ideals of the Enlightenment, which aimed at educating the people.
One of the main aspects of performance practice was ornamentation. Most instrumental music was divided into sections that were to be repeated, and it was in the repeat that performers were expected to add embellishments. The art of ornamentation was part of treatises, but sometimes composers also came to the amateurs' rescue by publishing pieces in which the ornamentation was written out. And that brings us to the first of the two recordings that are the subject of this review.
In 1760 Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, the main composer of keyboard music of his time, published a set of six sonatas with written-out repeats (reprises). They appeared in two editions, one in German and one in French, and this indicates that he was interested in a wide dissemination of these works. Tom Beghin, in the lenghty essay that accompanies his recording of these sonatas, states that "Bach must have wished to build on his burgeoning reputation as educator after his 1753 Versuch (über die wahre Art, das Clavier zu spielen)". These sonatas don't include any repeat sign.
It is worth to quote the preface: "In the composition of these sonatas, I have thought primarily of beginners and those amateurs who, due to their age or other occupations, do not have the time or the patience to practice too much. I have wished to procure them the easy means to obtain the pleasure to let themselves be heard with variations, without needing to invent these themselves, or to ask others to write them for them, and having to memorize them with lots of effort. Finally, I have expressed in the most explicit manner all that belongs to good delivery, so that one is able to play these pieces with complete freedom, even when one is not well disposed." (translation Tom Beghin)
The writing out of embellished repeats was not only inspired by the wish to educate amateurs - which was also in the interest of composers as it would increase the sale of their published works - but also by annoyance about what amateurs were doing wrong. "In his Versuch Bach calls the 'invention' (Erfindung) of varying repeats "admirable, yet also widely abused". (...) [In] the Wq 50 opus, he explicitly addresses amateurs (who would have been overwhelmingly female), offering them meticulously prepared scores that need no imagination: "just read and you'll be successful," seems to be the promise here." Beghin then asks: "Whose success, however, is at stake here - the player’s or his own?" He then dwells on musical practices at the time, such as page-turning and playing from memory, which are too much to be summarized here. If you decide to purchase this production, which I strongly recommend, be sure that you get the accompanying booklet, which is essential reading.
Beghin also analyzes the various sonatas and how Bach has created the reprises. Some aspects are worth mentioning. The set consists of six sonatas; with the exception of the sixth, they are in three movements. In the sonatas 1 to 4, the fast movements - the first and the third - have varied reprises; in the Sonata No. 5 it is only the opening movement. The last movement is a minuet with variations, which "takes the exercise in an entirely new direction." The Sonata No. 6 consists of a single movement. It "both culminates and transforms the opus. 'Culminates,' because what began by offering a helping hand to amateurs ends with a masterclass performance by Bach himself; 'transforms,' because variation has become a reigning principle of composition and performance, regardless of reprises or multi-movement sonatas."
Beghin recorded these six sonatas twice. There is a good reason for that, which is provided by Bach himself. In 1776 he was visited by Johann Friedrich Reichardt, who heard him play on his Silbermann clavichord. He played the third movement of the sonatas mit veränderten Reprisen, but he noted that Bach played "more than thirty variations". This is confirmed by a document in Bach's handwriting which includes embellishments of this movement. Beghin concludes: "Reichardt's testimony makes abundantly clear that Bach embodied the art he preached, to the point of negating the finality of a published version."
On the first disc the sonatas are played as they have been printed. The second contains the same sonatas, but now with the additional embellishments by Bach himself as they have been preserved in several manuscripts. In order to hear them in their context, Beghin decided not to isolate them, but to give the opportunity to hear them as part of the complete sonatas. For those who want to compare them, the digital version is preferable: one can order the movements in two versions. Even so, it is not that easy to identify the differences, especially as most listeners may not be familiar with these pieces. In comparison, it is much easier to listen to a work by Bach's father and identify in which way a performer does embellish them. One could probably say that this production is rather academic, also because of the lengthy and detailed essay.
However, the playing is anything but academic Beghin is a scholar, but also a very fine performer, as he shows here impressively. He plays a copy of a clavichord in Saxon design from about 1760 - the time these sonatas were published. The clavichord was Bach's preferred instrument, and may also have been the most widespread keyboard instrument at the time. The harpsichord was still very much in vogue, but expensive, and the fortepiano had not fully established itself yet. It turns out that the clavichord is also the ideal instrument from a musical point of view. Beghin knows how to use it, for instance its dynamic possibilities, which allows him to underline the typical features of the empfindsamer Stil, of which these sonatas are such brilliant specimens. One needs some time to adapt one's listening to the relatively soft sound of the clavichord, but after a while one starts to note and appreciate the wide spectrum the clavichord offers.
In short, this is a highly important and musically rewarding production, which nobody interested in CPE Bach's keyboard music should miss.
The second release to be reviewed here focuses on the genre of the fantasia. Bach composed and published sonatas, fantasias, rondos and some variations. These genres, except the last, one may recognize from the six sets of pieces for which Bach has become best-known: Clavier-Sonaten und freye Fantasien nebst einigen Rondos fürs Forte-Piano für Kenner und Liebhaber. The terms Kenner and Liebhaber refer to professional keyboard players and amateurs respectively. The sonatas and rondos aimed at amateurs; Bach wrote that "I know from experience that there are many who buy my collections only for the rondos." The fantasias are at the other end of the scale: here we find Bach at his most individual. These have their origins in his improvisations. That comes especially to the fore in the fact that some of these fantasias are largely without bars.
Aapo Häkkinen recorded a number of fantasias which are not part of these collections. In his Versuch Bach wrote: "It is particularly in the fantasias that the keyboard player, more than any other musician, can practice a declamatory style, passing audaciously from one affect to another […] to spontaneously master the feelings of his listeners". It is especially in the fantasias that the features of the Empfindsamkeit come to the fore.
With his fantasias Bach linked up with a long tradition, going back to the Renaissance, when organists played fantasias, which were the product of improvisation. The Spanish composer Luys de Milán wrote that the fantasia springs "solely from the fantasy and skill of the author who created it". It was a nice idea of Häkkinen to include one of Johann Sebastian's most famous keyboard works, the Chromatic fantasia and fugue, combining the freest form with a highly structured one. It had already cult status in the 18th century, and was held in high esteem by Bach's sons. Häkkinen plays it in a version by Johann Nikolaus Forkel, Bach's first biographer. It is a "transcribed a refined version of the piece in [Forkel's] manuscript
[P212] and subsequent edition that may have derived from a revised original version once in possession of the Bach sons."
The disc opens with the Sonata in f minor, but its inclusion can be justified by the fact that the last movement is called fantasia, and has all the traces of the other fantasias on this disc. Like his father, CPE Bach also combined two contrasting forms in his Fantasia and fugue in c minor. The poet Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg added an explicatory text to this piece, for which he chose Hamlet's suicide soliloquy and the final speech of Socrates about to drink the poisoned chalice. It confirms the strongly personal character of the fantasias, as has been noted before. The same goes for the last item in the programme, the Fantasia in f sharp minor, with the addition C.P.E. Bachs Empfindungen. Bach apparently liked this piece so much that he also created a version for keyboard and violin. The piece with the indication Abschied von meinem Silbermannischen Clavier has also a personal character, but in a different way: the freedom of the composer is embedded in the form of the rondo.
For most of the programme Häkkinen has chosen the clavichord, which is the best possible instrument for fantasias. He plays two historical clavichords, by Christoph Friedrich Schmahl and Pehr Lindholm respectively. The years of building are not mentioned, but that does not really matter as there was not much development in clavichord building. That was very different with the fortepiano. In three fantasias Häkkinen plays a fortepiano by Daniel Dörr. Again, the year it was built is not mentioned, but I found a tweet on the social media platform X from the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra, whose director Häkkinen is, which refers to a performance on a Dörr fortepiano of 1820. Dörr lived from 1788 to 1837. The choice of this instrument is something I really can't understand. It has nothing to do with historical performance practice. It is not the same as a modern concert grand, but anachronistic it is nevertheless. Häkkinen refers to the fortepiano as an instrument that with "its novel possibility of disengaging the dampers", achieves "a sound reminiscent of the fashionable pantalon." However, this Dörr fortepiano has little of that instrument (usually spelled pantaleon).
CPE Bach's fantasias belong among his most fascinating works, and it cannot be appreciated enough when a whole disc is devoted to this part of his oeuvre. Häkkinen is an excellent player of the clavichord, and his performances are very good. For that reason I recommend this disc. The use of an anachronistic fortepiano is a serious blot on this production, which prevents me from recommending it without reservation.
Johan van Veen (© 2026)
Relevant links:
Aapo Häkkinen