Yuan Sheng - Bach: Inventions & Sinfonias (2025) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

The latest volume in an ongoing series by an acclaimed Bach specialist on the modern piano.With recordings of the French Suites, Partitas and Goldberg Variations on Piano Classics, the Chinese pianist Yuan Sheng has placed himself among the most searching of present-day Bach pianists. As Jed Distler remarked in Gramophone, reviewing the Goldbergs, 'Yuan Sheng's disciplined, scrupulously terraced style often reflects his mentor Rosalyn Tureck.'In a new and illuminating booklet essay for this album, the musicologist and pianist Raymond Erickson remarks that the 15 two-part Inventions and the 15 three-part Sinfonias played an important role in Bach's teaching. These pieces, although today mainly associated with basic piano training, are not at all easy and in fact are sophisticated, small-scale masterpieces. 'They were not composed simply to provide technical training in keyboard playing but, perhaps more important, to teach keyboard players how to compose.'In 1720 Bach's oldest son Wilhelm Friedemann (1710-84) was already of an age appropriate for introducing him into the family trade of musician. So Bach started for him a music notebook: a Clavierbuchlein which included these Inventions and Sinfonias. Bach revised them shortly before moving to Leipzig in the spring of 1720, to take up his new post as Thomaskantor, and copied them out with a preface. In learning and playing these works, Bach affirmed, a diligent student would be taught 'a clear manner for playing not only in two voices but also in three obbligato parts and, furthermore, not only how to invent good musical ideas [inventiones] but also how to develop these well. And above all, how to achieve a cantabile manner of playing, and additionally to obtain a strong foretaste of Composition.'So it is that the Inventions and Sinfonias have given much pleasure to both performers and listeners throughout the subsequent two centuries. Brief as they are, each one of these 30 works elegantly outlines a distinct and often playful world of it's own. They reward intensive listening both on their own and in sequence. And Yuan Sheng's performances draw on all the coloristic possibilities and varieties of articulation available on the modern piano, without seeking to exceed the bounds of style which the works themselves inhabit.

Tracklist:
01. Invention 1 in C Major, BWV 772
02. Invention 2 in C Minor, BWV 773
03. Invention 3 in D Major, BWV 774
04. Invention 4 in D Minor, BWV 775
05. Invention 5 in E-Flat Major, BWV 776
06. Invention 6 in E Major, BWV 777
07. Invention 7 in E Minor, BWV 778
08. Invention 8 in F Major, BWV 779
09. Invention 9 in F Minor, BWV 780
10. Invention 10 in G Major, BWV 781
11. Invention 11 in G Minor, BWV 782
12. Invention 12 in A Major, BWV 783
13. Invention 13 in A Minor, BWV 784
14. Invention 14 in B-Flat Major, BWV 785
15. Invention 15 in B Minor, BWV 786
16. Sinfonia 1 in C Major, BWV 787
17. Sinfonia 2 in C Minor, BWV 788
18. Sinfonia 3 in D Major, BWV 789
19. Sinfonia 4 in D Minor, BWV 790
20. Sinfonia 5 in E-Flat Major, BWV 791
21. Sinfonia 6 in E Major, BWV 792
22. Sinfonia 7 in E Minor, BWV 793
23. Sinfonia 8 in F Major, BWV 794
24. Sinfonia 9 in F Minor, BWV 795
25. Sinfonia 10 in G Major, BWV 796
26. Sinfonia 11 in G Minor, BWV 797
27. Sinfonia 12 in A Major, BWV 798
28. Sinfonia 13 in A Minor, BWV 799
29. Sinfonia 14 in B-Flat Major, BWV 800
30. Sinfonia 15 in B Minor, BWV 801
31. Invention 1 in C Major, BWV 772a
32. Sinfonia 3 in D Major, BWV 789, Embellished Version
33. Sinfonia 4 in D Minor, BWV 790, Embellished Version
34. Sinfonia 7 in E Minor, BWV 793, Embellished Version
35. Sinfonia 9 in F Minor, BWV 795, Embellished Version
36. Sinfonia 11 in G Minor, BWV 797, Embellished Version
37. Sinfonia 13 in A Minor, BWV 799, Embellished Version


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