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The most famous scion of a musical family which stretched across at least ten generations, Johann Sebastian Bach had a very strong sense of history, tradition, and his evolving place in it, and was instrumental in curating and adding to the library of the music of the Bachs, which was known as the Altbachisches Archiv. This archive mostly comprises vocal music; now the Italian organist has created a fascinating instrumental counterpart, with short organ works by ten members of the family ranging from Heinrich Bach (1615--1692) to Wilhelm Friedemann Ernst Bach (1779--1845). And so, during the course of the disc, we move, always guided by the constraints of Protestant thought and liturgy, through austere low Baroque chorales to spectacular, late-Classical fantasias.

Militello has chosen an organ of ideal size and disposition for this repertoire: a new instrument, built to Baroque specifications within the vestry of the magnificent Lower Austrian Benedictine Abbey of Melk, overlooking the Danube on a rocky outcrop and providing a dramatic backdrop to what is already music of continually shifting rhetoric and invention.

Other information:

- The great Johann Sebastian received his musical genes from a widespread dynasty of musical craftsmen, teachers, performers, composers, bearing the name of Bach. This CD features not less than 10 composers from the Bach family, ranging from Heinrch Bach (1615-1692) to Friedemann Ernst Bach (1779-1845), without including the more famous offspring of the master (C.P.E., J.C. and W.F. Bach).

- Played on a beautiful new organ in the Chapel of the famous monastery of Melk in Austria.

- Liner notes written by the artist, information on the organ included.

These delightful concertos, pleasing in themselves, always fresh and full of invention, also provide a fascinating aural link between the Barock and Classical eras. It was of course C.P.E’s father, Johann Sebastian, who had visited the Prussian court of Frederick the Great, and been fated there for both his keyboard and compositional virtuosity: not the least result of which was his later masterpiece of chamber music, The Musical Offering, which subjects a theme originally devised by Frederick (or a more complex version of it) to endless contrapuntal variation. Perhaps as a result of that trip, C.P.E. secured a place at Frederick’s court, though when he arrived the welcome was not as warm as his father’s: Frederick, as a keen and by no means unskilled flute player, prized Joachhim Johann Quantz as ‘his’ favourite composer, not least because Quantz was especially expert in playing and writing music for the instrument in question.

Nothing loth, C.P.E. set to and fulfilled his duties, and with something of his father’s unbending will: perhaps another reason why he never found favour at the court. Two of the concertos on this disc were originally written for the court’s oboists, but they sit equally well within the compass of the flute when sympathetically transcribed.

This CD presents the 4 symphonies that Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach wrote during his stay in Hamburg. In these large-scale works the string section is extended with 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 horns and bassoon, instruments which are treated quasi olistically, so that one can almost speak of a Sinfonia Concertante.

The musical language is clearly “Sturm und Drang”, full of vehement dynamics and changes of sentiment, the fingerprint of this most famous son of Johann Sebastian.

Brilliant performances on period instruments by Solamente Naturali, an exciting group of early music players from Bratislava.

The repertoire for the modern guitar dates only as far back as the early 19th century, with the composers Guiliani and Sor. Before that, although many pieces of music were arranged for this most domesticated of instruments, none has survived. This CD contains two of the great masterpieces of Baroque instrumental music – the Chaconne from J.S. Bach’s D minor Partita for solo violin BWV1004, and Handel’s keyboard Chaconne.

The polyphonic quality of the modern guitar enables arrangers to transcribe music for plucked instruments such as the lute or harpsichord. The aim of this CD is to widen the repertoire of the classical guitar with some beautiful Baroque masterpieces.

C.P.E. Bach’s two surviving oboe concertos both began as keyboard concertos that were later transcribed for oboe; their intended performer was probably Johann Christian Fischer, a virtuoso based in Potsdam in the mid 1760s. This would perhaps account for their technical and immensely challenging solo lines, which suggest that, like his father, Carl Philipp Emmanuel revelled in pushing instruments and performers to their limits.

The highpoints of both concertos are their slow movements, which feature music of such beauty and chromatic melancholy – achieve by muting the oboe with sheep’s wool – that the emotion is profoundly moving. The concertos are complemented by the Pastorale in A minor and Sonata in G minor. Although the Pastorale is of uncertain authorship and may have been composed by C.P.E Bach’s brother Wilhelm Friedemann, the Sonata can be dated to the mid 1730s.

Like the concertos, this work has a highly effective slow movement, in this case the opening movement, containing music of great beauty and high emotional charge. A fast movement follows, and the work concludes with a virtuosic set of variations.

The classical and romantic “Lied” (song) genre finds its origins in the settings of strophic poems by o.a. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. His Odes contain settings of (sometimes rather liberal) secular poems as well as sacred texts, in a combination of recitative and aria, with rich and imaginative accompaniment of the continuo.

The Odes form a fascinating overview of the various styles employed by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, who during his long creative life developed from the pure Baroque style of his father Johann Sebastian to the “Sturm und Drang” era, with its pre-romantic outbursts of emotions.

New recording, liner notes and sung texts included.

Fifth son of Johann Sebastian Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel was in his time even more celebrated than his father.

His style developed during his long lifetime (1714-1788), more and more abandoning the Baroque counterpoint. New ways of musical expression were found, called “Empfindsamkeit” and “Sturm und Drang”, in which the human emotions are vividly expressed in quickly changing moods and daring harmonic shifts.

The famous Preussische und Württembergische Sonaten form a landmark of a style changing from Baroque to the Classical Era. Pieter-jan Belder has a special feeling for these quirky and capricious works, keeping form and content firmly together. His extensive discography for Brilliant Classics contains nearly all Bach works, the complete Scarlatti Sonatas, and the complete harpsichord works of Ramea.

The keyboard sonatas of C.P.E. Bach (1714–1788) bear the hallmarks of a composer who lived through a significant moment in musical history; the fifth child of J.S. Bach, not only was Carl Philipp Emanuel employed at the court of Frederick the Great – whose patronage and amateur music making remain legendary to this day – he composed his works during the transition from the Baroque to the Classical period. His keyboard sonatas, in particular, are musical landmarks that epitomise the style and values of an era. The Preussische and Württembergische Sonatas, collected together on this splendid new 3-disc set, exemplify C.P.E. Bach’s celebrated style of composition, while revealing the impact of the period’s stylistic influences. The Empfindsamkeit and Sturm und Drang movements, in particular, can be heard in the music’s thrilling and unexpected changes of mood, emphasis on expression, daring approach to harmony and diminishing reliance on traditional counterpoint.

Although there are traces of the earlier style, brought to its perfection by Carl Philipp Emanuel’s father, the Preussische and Württembergische sonatas demonstrate a determined shift towards a new style, prefiguring the Classical era. Given an expert performance by the awardwinning harpsichordist and clavichord player Pieter-Jan Belder, whose interpretations highlight the expressive qualities and shifting moods of the music, these sonatas give a compelling insight into the transition from the Baroque era to the Classical period, and into a composer who was at the forefront of the stylistic movements of his day.

Concertos by Danzi, Benda, Hoffmeister, CPE Bach, A Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Telemann & Mozart.