CPE Bach

Six Keyboard Sonatas, `Wiirttemberg Sonatas', Wq49/1-6 - Nos 4-6 Mild& Spanyi clay BIS 0 815-CD1424 (67' • DDD)

Miklos Spanyi reaches Vol 17 of the solo keyboard music of one of the most important of 18th-century composers with three of Bach's six "Wiirttemberg" Sonatas (Nos 1-3 were in Vol 16), so called because they were dedicated to the Duke of Wiirttemberg on their publication in the 1740s. They are relatively early works, then, but while frequently dealing in those typical mid-century textures, the drum-bass and the melodic "sigh", they also show in places such as the second movement of Sonata

No 5 or the first of No 6 the kind of expressiveness we tend to associate with the later, more artistically liberated Bach, and which audibly lays the ground for the pained chromaticism of some of Mozart's piano slow movements. More than that, in their individually calculated formal layouts (all three have angular fugal movements, though not always in the same place) and their leaning towards emotionally charged vocal-style melody, they can even put you in mind of late Beethoven. The first movement of rhetorical detailing, it has the feel, sometimes even the sound, of a conversation.