Product Description
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March 8th, 2014 marks the 300th Birthday of Carl Philipp Emanuel
Bach. This is the first of the complete piano works by
C.P.E. Bach. Ana-Marija Markovina, the featured artist for these
s, has been working for over ten years with the music of
CPE Bach and has developed her own intuitive approach to his
style. During his lifetime, CPE Bach was more famous than his
her, Johann Sebastian; it is time to rediscover the incredible
range and the quality of his once again.
Review
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This past March, shortly after the 300th birthday of Carl
Philipp Emanuel Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach's second surviving
son, I took stock of the ambitious efforts of the hänssler
CLASSIC label to celebrate this anniversary year. However, I did
not fully appreciate the extent of the label's ambitions until I
encountered the box set of pianist Ana-Marija Markovina
the complete keyboard works of "Bach the son." Consisting of 26
CDs, this is an impressively thorough effort to cover the entire
keyboard canon, including the unpublished works, as well as the
published ones, and the entries in Eugene Helm's 1989 catalog
that had not been included in the 1906 catalog compiled by Alfred
Wotquenne.
As important as thoroughness, however, is Markovina's decision to
play all of this music on a modern piano. Bach lived a full life,
born on March 8, 1714 and living until December 14, 1788, meaning
that he most likely was born after Bartolomeo Cristofori built
his first piano (which was probably before 1700). By the time he
died, we have every reason to believe that Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart was already composing with this "modern" instrument in
mind; and the same can be said of Joseph Haydn with about the
same level of confidence.
Purists may still prefer to insist that Bach's music would have
been better served by a "period" instrument. However, Bach was a
very demanding virtuoso. Between his source material and the
scrupulous efforts of subsequent scholarly editors, we have
grounds to assume that Bach appreciated the rhetorical impact of
not only the clear distinctions between piano and forte but also
the gradual transitions between them achieved through decrescendo
and crescendo, that latter having become firmly established
through the instrumental practices of the Mannheim court
orchestra.
I have only a few of Emanuel Bach's piano works, and yet even a
few must not only bring every true artist great enjoyment but
also serve him as study material.
Future generations (going all the way to Arnold Schoenberg) would
be saying the same of Beethoven's own piano works.
In such an auspicious context, I have spent the better part of
this month listening to Markovina's s. Since the
collection has not been arranged in chronological order, one
cannot talk about the box set, taken as a whole, defining any
sort of "journey." Nevertheless, there is something to be said
for giving these s some "deep-end" listening, even if
that does not necessarily entail traversing the entire collection
without letting any other music "distract." (No, my own listening
was definitely not that intense.)
When confronted with a generous sample, one begins to appreciate
that Bach was as much a virtuoso at the keyboard as his her
was. Just as importantly, however, by surveying a broad
collection of his music, the mind begins to discern a set of
tropes in his rhetoric that differ significantly from those of
his her. Indeed, to the contrary, those tropes are familiar to
us because we have been exposed to them through our familiarity
with Mozart and Haydn. In other words as we get to know those
tropes, we can appreciate that those "testimonials" provided by
Schlüren are far more than gratuitous lip service.
Every one of the 26 CDs in this collection can be appreciated for
this "double-edged value;" but there is the additional joy of
recognizing just how prodigious Bach could be over the course of
a long and happy professional life. --Stephen Smoliar, National
Examiner
This 26-CD set containing CPE Bach's complete solo piano works
represents a landmark of the highest importance and, more
significantly, listening pleasure. Ana-Marija Markovina has made
a specialty of playing these works. She previously recorded the
Prussian and Württemburg sonatas (for Genuin), but it is
difficult to overstate the richness and variety found on these
discs, or Markovina's consistent success in rendering it all with
such freshness, excitement, intensity, and charm. --David
Hurwitz, classicstoday.com
