Aapo Hakkinen - C.P.E. Bach - Fantasias (2023) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was widely known for his passionate, incomparable improvisations on the clavichord, most characteristically in the form of free fantasia. His compositions were unique in style, full of contrasts, and universally admired by several generations; the Vienna Classicists, even Beethoven and Schubert, considered him their musical father.

Declamatory, improvisatory style is of course the epitaph of all 18th-century music – exemplified in Johann Sebastian Bach's Chromatic Fantasia BWV903, with its central recitative and broken chords audaciously passing through distant harmonies. Johann Nikolaus Forkel, author of the first Bach biography and part of C.P.E. Bach’s literary circles, transmitted a refined version in his manuscript (P 212) and subsequent edition that may derive from a revised original version once in possession of the Bach sons. C.P.E. Bach’s Fantasia in C minor (published in 1753) bears distinct similarities to his father’s Fantasia chromatica, and it has been suggested that it may in fact have been a tombeau to the elder Bach. The deep personal nature and connection between the two works is explicit.

For Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and the ‘Bachists’, the most expressive and intimate compositions were reserved for the clavichord. It was in the clavichord that one might ‘find the soundboard of your heart. … Have no regrets when alone under the moonlight you improvise, or refresh your soul on a summer night, or when you celebrate a spring evening; ah! then pine not for the strident harpsichord. See, your clavichord breathes as gently as your heart.’ (Ch.F.D. Schubart: Musikalische Rhapsodien III, 1786) Charles Burney, who visited C.P.E. Bach in Hamburg in 1772, described the composer improvising at his legendary clavichord, built by Gottfried Silbermann: ‘He grew so animated and possessed that he not only played but looked like one inspired. His eyes were fixed, his lower lip fell, and drops of effervescence distilled from his countenance.’

TRACKLIST

1. Aapo Hakkinen - Sonata in F Minor, Wq.63/6 (H.75): I. Allegro di molto
2. Aapo Hakkinen - Sonata in F Minor, Wq.63/6 (H.75): II. Adagio affettuoso
3. Aapo Hakkinen - Sonata in F Minor, Wq.63/6 (H.75): III. Fantasia
4. Aapo Hakkinen - Fantasia and Fugue in C Minor, Wq.119/7 (H.75.5): I. Fantasia
5. Aapo Hakkinen - Fantasia and Fugue in C Minor, Wq.119/7 (H.75.5): II. Fugue
6. Aapo Hakkinen - Fantasia in D Major, Wq.117/14 (H.160)
7. Aapo Hakkinen - Fantasia in G Minor, Wq.117/13 (H.225)
8. Aapo Hakkinen - Fantasia in E-Flat Major, Wq. deest (H.348)
9. Aapo Hakkinen - Fantasia and Fugue in D Minor, Wq. deest (H.349): I. Fantasia
10. Aapo Hakkinen - Fantasia and Fugue in D Minor, Wq. deest (H.349): II. Fugue
11. Aapo Hakkinen - Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 903: I. Fantasia
12. Aapo Hakkinen - Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 903: II. Fugue
13. Aapo Hakkinen - Rondo in E Minor, Abschied von meinem Silbermannischen Claviere, Wq.66 (H.272)
14. Aapo Hakkinen - Fantasia in F-Sharp Minor, C.P.E. Bachs Empfindungen, Wq.67 (H.300)



Thanks to the Original customer.