Luogo e data di registrazione		Hervormde Kerk, Bennebroek (Holland) - 16/18, 20/21 Giugno 1966
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer		Wolf Erichson
	Prima Edizione LP		Telefunken "Das Alte Werk" | SAWT 9490-A | 1 LP - durata 49' 36" | (p) 1967 | ANA
	Edizione CD		Teldec Classics | LC 6019 | 0630-12326-2 | 1 CD - durata 49' 36" | (c) 1996 | ADD
	Cover		Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (1710-1784), J. S. Bach's eldest son, painting by Wilhelm Wltsch, Museum of the Town of Halle.
	Note		-

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Double Concerto for Harpsichord and “Hammerklavier” is, if the date 1788 attributed to it is correct, the latest of the three works on this record. In any case it is the most original. Bach’s second son, a lifelong experimenter, has intervened here - in the year of his death - in a process that must have occupied his attention very much as the greatest “expressive” master of the harpsichord and clavichord: the displacement of the “old” harpsichord by the “modern” “Hammerklavier” (long decided by 1788), and has easily come to terms with the situation. The solution he offers is both conservative and revolutionary at the same time. Once again the harpsichord is used quite naturally as a solo instrument (Mozart’s great piano concertos were already written, but for the last, in 1788), but it is contrasted with its victorious rival in such a manner that the soundcharacter of both instruments and their possibilities of colour are effectively played off against one another. The principle of “concertare” has been transferred from a contest between tutti and solo to a rivalry between two principles of sound production and playing. It is thus extended in a most ingenious fashion into a reflection of the historical competition between the two instruments, the harpsichord having more to say in the first movement, the piano displaying its greater melodiousness and the harpsichord its greater agility in the second and the piano not finally “setting the fashion” until the Finale. That the work falls between the epochs also reveals itself in the basic character of its three movements: in the nervously resilient rhythms of the “Hamburg Bach”, the abrupt dynamic contrasts and the amazing harmonic changes, as well as in the already quite classical, free and colourful treatment of the wind, in the adventurous virtuosity of the outer movements and in the “cantilena” of the Larghetto, noble yet continually divided into finely-chiselled ornamentation. Johann Christian Bach’s Sinfonia Concertante, probably written during the composer’s later years in London (ca. 1770-1781), is a genuine “concertante” symphony after the Parisian pattern, but completely filled with the melodic grace and gentle sensibility of this most “galant” of composers. Like many concertos, symphonies and chamber music works of the pre-classical period, this work has only two movements - a large-scale Allegro in free sonata form and an Italianate Tempo di Minuetto. Both derive their substance from an ingratiatingly song-like and graceful melodic style that is essentially highly conventional. But the manner in which a concerto movement of the greatest elegance and finesse of form is built out of these fashionable turns of phrase, how a delicately rustic mood a la Watteau is distilled from the Italian minuet character constitutes the secret and the magic of the “London Bach”, who realized more truly than any other composer of the 18th century the ideal (by no means to be despised) of a social art refined to the utmost. A greater contrast in the music of this century could hardly be imagined than that existing between this work and the Double Concerto of the eldest and most unhappy of Bach’s sons, Wilhelm Friedemann, which was presumably written around 1750-60. It is modelled on concertos by the father in that it is written for two solo harpsichords, and on the latter’s C major Concerto in that the middle movement is a duet for the solo instruments without orchestra. Otherwise there is very little that recalls his father’s style - most readily perhaps the heavy and resplendent orchestral writing with trumpets, horns and timpani, which is still treated entriely in the manner of a baroque tutti. Also baroque is the character of the first movement with its gloomy solemnity, its “sighing” suspensions and its brief chordal interjections by the tutti into the big, virtuoso solo passages; the harmony, on the other hand is strongly reminiscent of the style of his younger brother Carl Philipp Emanuel in its surprise effects. In spite of its key of C minor, the 3/8 Cantablile with its rapturous parallel thirds and sixths, written in three parts throughout, is more genial in its effect than this mighty first movement in the peculiar chiaroscuro colouring which had already struck his contemporaries in Friedemann’s style. The Finale combines the baroque sound of the first movement with a thematic material that is already quite early classical, almost reminiscent of early Haydn, and in typical finale character. Even so, it is not yet able to find the carefree finale spirit, the “final dance” character of the early classical period; the gloomy, frequently fantastic-bizarre quality that dominated Wilhelm Friedemann’s life just as much as his work is also clearly in evidence here. Ludwig Finscher Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian Bach Our image of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, the eldest son of Johann Sebastian, has been distorted through legends about his allegedly dissolute life, drunkenness and. forgeries. The fact that these legends, spread once upon a time by influential writers on music, have asserted themselves for so long, and that their influence can still be felt today through Emil Brachvogel’s novel (1858) is largely due to a lack of information dating from Friedemann’s own lifetime, as a result of which important events are shrouded in darkness. Wilhelm Friedemann was undoubtedly the most brilliant of the older Bach’s sons. Born on the 22nd November 1710 in Weimar, he received a thorough musical training from his father, this being documented by the Little Keyboard Book, begun in Cöthen on the 22nd January Ao. 1720, written specially for Friedemann by his father. After attending St. Thomas's School in Leipzig, where the family had settled in 1723, Friedemann studied various subjects for four years at Leipzig University, as was usual for an educated musician in those days, his favourite subject being mathematics. In 1733 he was appointed organist at St. Sophia's “Church in Dresden. His duties were but few, and so he had plenty of time to gather artistic stimuli in this cosmopolitan city, through the company of such composers as J. A. Hasse and through access to the music of the court, for which he wrote a large number of instrumental works. After thirteen years Friedemann left Dresden in 1746, and took up the post of organist at the “Liebfrauenkirche” in Halle, a post which Johann Sebastian had turned down thirty years previously. Far more extensive tasks awaited Friedemann in Halle; not only did he have to play the organ, but also to be responsible for the entire church music. Halle also meant a complete readjustment for the artist in another respect: from the capital city, open to every artistic stimulus, Friedemann came to the former centre of pietism, where the attitude towards church music was, at bottom, hostile. Friction was therefore bound to arise between the artist, inclined towards eccentricity and willfulness, and the church authorities to whom he was responsible. It eventually led to his resigning from his post in 1764; the actual reason is not known to us. Without ever occupying a permanent position again, he led from then onward an unsettled, restless life that took him to Brunswick in 1770 and finally to Berlin in 1774, where he died in 1784, leaving his wife and daughter in the greatest poverty. He was hampered by his inability to strike a balance between his artistry and bourgeois life, and suffered the same fate as the poets of the “Sturm und Drang” (storm and stress) period - the age of geniuses, which was then just dawning. The idea of life as a free artist was still incapable of realization at that time. Even so, Friedemann remained in high esteem as an organist and improvisor; in his obituary in Cramer's Magazine in 1784 we find the words: “Germany has lost in him its leading organist, and the entire musical world a man whose loss cannot be made good.” "I, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, was born at Weimar in March 1714. My late father was Johann Sebastian, conductor at various courts and finally Musical Director in Leipzig... After completing my school education at St. Thoma's School, Leipzig, I studied law, both in Leipzig and, later, in Frankfurt on the Oder, in which latter place I conducted and composed for both a musical ‘academy’ and all public musical performances at festivities that fell within that period. In composition and in keyboard playing I never had any other teacher than my father. When I ended my academic years in 1738 and went to Berlin, I had a favourable opportunity of conducting a young gentleman to foreign countries; an unexpected gracious appointment by the Crown Prince of Prussia at that time, now the king, to Ruppin caused my intended journey to be cancelled. Certain circumstances, however, resulted in my not being able to enter formally into the service of His Prussian Majesty until his accession in 1740... From this time until November 1767 I was continuously in the service of Prussia, notwithstanding the opportunity I had a few times of taking up favourable appointments elsewhere ... In 1767 I was offered the post of Musical Director in Hamburg in place of the late conductor Herr Telemann! ... My Prussian duties never left me sufficient time to travel to foreign countries ... This lack of journeys abroad would have been most detrimental to me in my profession had I not had the particular good fortune from my youth onward of hearing in the vicinity the most excellent in all kinds of music, and of making the acquaintance of very many masters of the first order...” This quotation is from the biographical sketch that Philipp Emanuel provided in 1773 for the German translation of Burney's Diary of a Musical Journey. Of Johann Sebastian’s sons, it was he who exercised the most important influence on the classical period, being revered by Haydn (“Emanuel is the father, we are his children”) and taken as a model by Beethoven. Philipp Emanuel became famous just as much through his clavichord playing as through his didactic work Treatise on the True Manner of Playing Keyboard Instruments (1753) and through his keyboard compositions. In contrast to his elder brother Friedemann, he was an adroit man of the world and an astute businessman who partly published his own compositions. He was highly educated, enjoyed the company of Lessing, Klopstock and Matthias Claudius and corresponded on musical matters with Diderot. Philipp Emanuel died in Hamburg on the 14th December 1788. Johann Christian Bach, born on the 5th September 1735 in Leipzig as the youngest son of Johann Sebastian, was the most modern of the brothers in his composition. His significance for the new style was long underestimated, and he was considered playful, trifling and superficial. He particularly exercised a profound and lasting influence on Mozart, who came to London, where Bach had just settled, as a child prodigy in 1764. The life of Johann Christian diverges fundamentally from that of the other Bachs; indeed it could be called completely un-Bachian. Already as a boy, with the scanty financial circumstances of his parents’ home before his eyes, he wished to achieve fame and wealth as a musician, and paved the way for himself towards this goal in every thinkable manner. After the death of his father in 1750, he went to Berlin at the age of fifteen, to his half-brother Philipp Emanuel, who trained him as an excellent keyboard player. At the same time he received stimulation from the Berlin Opera, where the Italian style was cultivated by Graun and Hasse. Probably in 1756, he travelled to Italy with an Italian prima donna, in order to study opera himself at its source. A noble patron enabled him to study with Padre Martini in Bologna, who was later to teach the young Mozart as well. By changing over to the Catholic faith, Johann Christian, who now called himself Giovanni Bach, became appointed organist at Milan Cathedral in 1760. Soon after this he wrote his first operas for Turin and Naples, through which he immediately achieved fame. In the summer of 1762, however, he was already turning his steps towards London, where he presented operas as the Saxon Music-Master John Bach, and was granted the position of Royal Music-Master to the young queen. London was then a particular centre of attraction to musicians, for a rich musical life had prevailed there since Handel’s time. Bach became the acknowledged favourite of the London public, composing work after work with ease and leading an extremely luxurious life. A royal decree refers to him as the “loyal and well-beloved Bach”. Characteristic of his attitude to his own works is the remark in the autograph of his B flat major Piano Concerto: “How have I made this concerto, isn’t that fine?” In the years 1772-1779 Bach made journeys to Mannheim, the centre of the new trend in style, and to Paris, and scored great successes there with new operas. Then, however, his. fortunes began to decline. Enslaved by drink and deeply in debt, he died in London already on the 1st January 1782. Hans-Christian Müller