The vast corpus of music by
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach remains only sporadically recorded and not really well understood, so the reissue by the Phoenix Edition label of these 1988 recordings from Capriccio is welcome. They're not ideal, marred by harsh, boxy church sound, with less than perfectly silky performances, but the music is worth getting into circulation once again. These symphonies date from the 1770s, during the later part of
Bach's career, and in this two-CD set they're in reverse chronological order: the four orchestral symphonies with 12 obbligato parts were published in 1780 in Hamburg, while the the Six symphonies for strings and continuo were commissioned in 1773 by the same
Baron Gottfried van Swieten who stimulated some of
Haydn's and
Mozart's greatest works.
Van Swieten urged
Bach to give free rein to his imagination, not worrying about technical problems, and
Bach obliged. All the symphonies are cut from the same cloth, with opening movements that careen through a series of unexpected modulations and register shifts, moody slow movements, and brief finales that provide relaxation after the thrills of the first two. The
Kammerorchester "Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach" under
Hartmut Haenchen gets the rough, abrupt quality in this music, which over the course of two CDs is absolutely never boring. Any of these works could appear on a standard orchestra program and set the crowd on its ear. Like the rest of Phoenix's series, this is worth seeking out for fans of the Classical period.