About this product

Product Identifiers

Record LabelBrilliant Classics, Brlt

UPC5028421955841

eBay Product ID (ePID)28071196167

Product Key Features

Release Year2024

FormatCD

GenreClassical Artists

ArtistBach, C.F.E.

Release TitleSix Concertos, Wq43 Transcribed for 2 Harpsichords

Dimensions

Item Height0.39 in

Item Weight0.25 lb

Item Length5.51 in

Item Width4.75 in

Additional Product Features

Number of Discs2

Number of Tracks19

Country/Region of ManufactureUnited States

Tracks1.1 I. Allegro di molto [07:09] 1.2 II. Andante [04:30] 1.3 III. Prestissimo [05:35] 1.4 I. Allegro di molto [09:25] 1.5 II. Andante [06:36] 1.6 III. Allegretto [06:19] 1.7 I. Allegro [08:08] 1.8 II. Larghetto [03:41] 1.9 III. Presto [05:09] 1.10 I. Allegro assai [04:12] 1.11 II. Poco adagio [02:11] 1.12 III. Tempo di minuetto [03:30] 1.13 IV. Allegro assai [05:31] 1.14 I. Adagio - Presto [06: 33] 1.15 II. Adagio [02:24] 1.16 III. Allegro [05:32] 1.17 I. Allegro di molto [08:27] 1.18 II. Larghetto [03:51] 1.19 III. Allegro [07:27]

NotesCarl Philipp Emanuel Bach wrote this set of six keyboard concertos Wq43 once he had been released from the constricting service to Frederick the Great of Prussia. He moved from Potsdam to Hamburg, and began composing there with new-found freedom. Published in 1772, these concertos are among the first-fruits of such liberated imagination. CPE designated them as 'six easy harpsichord concertos', with the same 'Liebhaber' in mind as the cultivated amateur audience for some of his keyboard sonatas. Nonetheless, the solo parts of these works will test the mettle of any aspiring or proven virtuoso. Their greatest originality, though, lies in their form. Each concerto is written cyclically, or continuously, meaning that one movement leads directly into the next. Even the cadenzas are fully written out, anticipating in this regard Beethoven's 'Emperor' Concerto of two generations later. While tautly disciplined in this way, the concertos are also full of CPE's flights of fancy: nowhere more so than the No. 4, in which the initial Allegro suddenly veers into an Adagio episode, and just as abruptly transforms into a Minuet. A cadenza unites the themes of all three movements or episodes before a final reprise of the Allegro: unprecedented, even for CPE. The panoply of CPE's instrumentation is necessarily compressed by this transcription of the concertos for two harpsichords, but the vitality of dialogue is fully preserved. It was made (or at least copied) by Johann Gottlieb Haußstädler, a copyist working for Peter August, the organist for the Elector of Saxony. The two men may have collaborated on the arrangement; at any rate, it has been unknown until now, and comes to life in the hands of a pair of Italian musicians with a serious pedigree in recording music of this period for Brilliant Classics