C P E Bach - Complete Keyboard Concertos, Volume 5

2010

“With his fifth volume of CPE Bach's complete keyboard concertos, Miklós Spányi comes to three works composed in the mid-1740s, which he plays on a copy of a Silbermann fortepiano of that period. The choice isn't only determined by the existence of such instruments at Frederick the Great's court, where Carl Philipp was employed, but also because the keyboard layout is more suited to the fortepiano than the harpsichord, and because the A major work here – a first recording, like that of the D major – includes the marking pianissimo. The present instrument is light and silvery in tone, which makes for some difficulties of proportion in the D major, performed with additional manuscript parts found in Brussels for trumpets and drums.
The more embellished version of the A major Concerto is adopted here. The first movement displays some particularly athletic passagework for the piano. The E major Concerto is musically the most inventive and unusual of the three works, and harmonically certainly the most adventurous – a splendid concerto that deserves to be better known. The recording has occasional problems with balance but the performances are praiseworthy.”