CPE Bach: Piano Concertos Wq. 1,15,45

What happened in Leipzig in 1733 was crucial to the development of a musical genre that has been an integral part of the music scene for over two hundred years: the keyboard concerto. That year, Johann Sebastian Bach wrote his great Concerto in D minor BWV 1052 and his second oldest son Carl Philipp Emanuel, aged just 19, composed his first keyboard concerto, the Concerto Wq 1 in A minor. Anyone who directly compares the two concertos will hardly believe that they were both written in the same place and at the same time: on the one hand, the elder Bach’s harpsichord piece, plumbs the deepest depths of polyphony; on the other, the younger Bach’s new approach to keyboard-writing, a style that almost seems to overlook the omnipresent tradition of counterpoint. Setting aside the extremely complicated compositional history of JS Bach’s harpsichord concerto — from the presumed adaptation of an oboe concerto by Benedetto Marcello through to the arrangement of Bach’s own violin concerto for keyboard by his son Emanuel (BWV 1052a) — what is certain is that the younger Bach did not simply inherit the keyboard concerto as a genre from the hands of his father; he played a decisive part in shaping and enriching it from the outset. Another point to note is that the composer’s artistic identity fundamentally changed during this period: the truths of faith ceased to be the focal point, eclipsed by principles of the Enlightenment, namely self-assurance and self-reliance.

Reviews

"Rische's spare, dry, strikingly accented playing is carried by the same dramatic impulsiveness as the ensemble's cool, glistening, almost vibratoless string sound ..." (Fono Forum, March 2018)

"The musicians are aware in every measure that they are working here at a hinge of music history. Rische plays with exquisite technique and leaves the music its filigree charm." (Rheinische Post, March 2019)

"In the sound frame of the Berlin Baroque Soloists, Michael Rische's imaginative, agile and technically excellent playing can fully unfold. The fast movements sound plucky, the slow ones full of charm." (Pizzicato)