Pieter-Jan Belder / C.P.E. Bach: Sonaten fur Kenner und Liebhaber (2013)

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Pieter-Jan Belder / C.P.E. Bach: Sonaten fur Kenner und Liebhaber (2013)

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Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, the  most famous son of the great Johann Sebastian, created his own individual style, in which freedom of expression was the keyword. This substantial collection of keyboard works, ‘Für Kenner und Liebhaber’ (for connoisseur and amateur) contains some of his most audacious compositions, in which frequent and abrupt mood changes, improvisatory and declamatory passages without bar lines and wildly digressing modulations are the stylistic landmarks.

Pieter Jan Belder is one of the most respected and esteemed keyboard players of today. His immense discography for Brilliant Classics bears witness of a highly skilled and communicative musician, with a deep and innate understanding of the style and performance practice of the Baroque and Classical Period.

Composer: Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach
Performer: Pieter-Jan Belder

Reviews: As the liner notes for this excellent collection point out, the six collections of published sonatas “for experts and amateurs” were not only C. P. E. Bach’s “most ambitious publishing venture” but are significantly different from the keyboard sonatas he intended for the popular market, much more adventurous in musical content and construction. The first series came out in 1779, when he had already been working in Hamburg for a dozen years, and thus away from the musically limited court of Frederick the Great where he spent nearly 30 years before that.


I was lucky enough to review a different recording of the first collection, the sonatas Wq 55, played by Sri Lankan pianist Preethi de Silva on Centaur 3279 ( Fanfare 37:3). Although I loved de Silva’s approach, and particularly praised the full tone of her fortepiano, in many ways this collection supercedes hers, particularly since it is complete, including all five books. Pieter-Jan Belder’s fortepiano is equally as rich-sounding as de Silva’s, and he attacks these pieces with remarkable sweep and vigor, as well as paying attention to the quirky, slightly irregular pulse that C. P. E. Bach’s keyboard music always requires. In short, I found Belder’s playing equally valid in style and approach, and being able to hear all the sonatas published under this title is a musical journey unparalleled elsewhere except for the sonatas of Beethoven.


Indeed, you might think that even a seasoned reviewer (or perhaps especially a seasoned reviewer) would get bored listening to five full CDs of solo keyboard music by one composer, but that is the magic of this collection. Every disc opens your ears and mind to some of the most spectacularly inventive music ever written. Every disc contains music even more daring and audacious than the disc before it. Even today, as long as you accept the harmonic limitations of his era, C. P. E. Bach’s music surprises the heck out of you with its invention: the pauses that suspend time before a secondary theme or variant comes barreling out at you, the creative counterpoint that sometimes uses notes within the chord rather than the predictable figured bass one expects, the many and varied tempo changes within movements, and even at times linked movements, something no other composer I know of dared to attempt until Beethoven. In fact, interspersed with the sonatas in the second through the fifth collections are three Rondos (and, in books 3–5, a couple of Fantasias). The third Rondo of book 2 sounds for all the world like mid-period Beethoven, the first Rondo of collection three sounds very similar to the music of Schumann, and Rondo two of book three sounds like Mozart at his most inventive. C. P. E. was, quite simply, a creator of genius level, on a par with such legendary improvisers and creators as Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Earl Hines, and Art Tatum.


Thus, although this was a long set to review, my judgment is relatively terse and to the point. Just get it. You won’t be disappointed by the music, performance, or sound quality.