CPE Bach: Symphonies cover
Released

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment finds a perfect match in the symphonies of the CPE Bach; this is intelligent music full of energy and contrast, performed in ways musically and historically revealing. C.P.E. Bach’s music bridges the sound worlds of his famous father and the later Mozart-Haydn-Beethoven generation, and it has been undergoing a period of rediscovery after relative historical neglect. What is most remarkable about these symphonies is how much they contain: Baroque in dimensions but radical in their use of mercurial mood swings, by turns ebullient (track 1), lugubrious (track 11), and weird (track 7), sometimes all in the span of a few seconds (track 4).

Sean Wood

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