C P E Bach - Complete Keyboard Concertos, Volume 6

2010

“On this recording Miklós Spányi has exchanged his previous harpsichord or fortepiano for a tangent piano: it's like a fortepiano but has the strings struck vertically by tangents (as in the clavichord) rather than at an angle by hammers.
Its tone could also be modified by raising the dampers completely or only in the treble, employing only one of each note's two strings (una corda), inserting a leather strip ('moderator') between tangents and strings, or creating a harp-like effect by damping the strings with small pieces of cloth.
The boldness and unusual style of CPE Bach's concertos took his contemporaries aback, and even now they can surprise. The extrovert E minor work, for example, begins with dramatic energy but is interrupted by extraordinary, tentative-sounding broken phrases at the soloist's first entry before being allowed to continue on its way: the Adagio, which includes striking chromatic progressions, has imitative interplay between the solo instrument and the violins. The finale of the otherwise more 'normal' galant G minor Concerto generates very vehement chordal attacks – or are these being overdone here? Spányi's playing throughout has vitality and neatness, although his lifting of the dampers in running passages inevitably causes them to become blurred.”