CPE Bach: Symphonies, Cello Concertos - OAE, Leonhardt

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
Symphonies, Cello Concertos
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Gustav Leonhardt
Virgin 7243 5 61794 2 4

C. P. E. Bach's three cello concertos belong to the period between 1738 and 1768 when he served as court harpsichordist to Frederick the Great. Each work exists in alternative versions for solo flute and solo harpsichord with strings. Which version came first is uncertain. Frederick himself apparently disliked the cello, but since he seldom if ever appreciated Bach's worth as a composer, the point, perhaps, remains of minor significance.
However unlikely, circumstantially, that the cello versions came first, it is nevertheless that instrument which often seems to bring out the expressive qualities in the music most eloquently. This is, above all, the case in the slow movements where the cello captures that darkly shaded intensity of expression at which Bach excelled. The most striking of the three is the muted Largo mesto of the A major Concerto (Wq172), which plunges the listener into a shadowy world whose wide-ranging imaginative content presages early German romanticism. None of this is lost on Anner Bylsma who is quite the most ardently persuasive advocate for the Empfindsamer Stil that I could wish for. His playing of all three slow movements is suffused with an intensity and rapt contemplation which draw in the listener holding his concentration, as it were, spellbound. Fast outer movements, in contrast, dance along happily with lightly articulated solo passages, warm tone and eloquent projection. There are, admittedly, a few passages of shaky intonation, but taken in context with the performances as a whole they bothered my ears less than usual. Bylsma brings enormous warmth of spirit to the music, sometimes tender, sometimes quite fiercely passionate and always with sympathetic understanding of Bach's individual gestures. The cadenzas are Bylsma's own, and very convincing they are too.

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment provide strong support for most of the time, though in the opening movement of the Concerto in A major the sound of the upper strings is occasionally thin and undernourished. Ensemble is not always impeccable and sometimes I felt that Bylsma and the orchestra were not always at one in what they were attempting to convey. Nevertheless, Gustav Leonhardt's direction—from the podium rather than the harpsichord on this occasion—is characteristically sympathetic, bringing many insights to an elusive style. The recorded sound is admirably clear and ideally resonant. A disc which should prove irresistible to all but those of Frederick the Great's persuasion.

N.A., Gramophone.net