Bach, J.S.-Flute and Harpsichord Sonatas Vol. 2

"As durable as granite, as clear as crystal. These discs are an indispensable collection

It's no surprise that all musicians and music-lovers meet in their respect and affection for the music of J.S.Bach. Its human, but it's also superhuman. It's as durable and as rock-hard as granite, withstanding any style of performance from the most rigorously authentic to the freest of jazz treatments. In Bach the world of music, indeed the whole of life, seems to be in balance; intellect, spirituality, popular appeal, harmony, counterpoint, melody, rhythm.

He was, nonetheless, a fiercely practical composer, writing music for where it was needed and most often for performers he knew, or had trained. From his first posts as organist at Arnstadt, and then Mühlhausen he moved on in 1708 to be court organist and concertmaster to the cultured but despotic Duke of Weimar. Then in 1717 he accepted the position as music director at the court of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, whom Bach described as a patron "who both loved and understood music."

It was probably while he was here at Cöthen that Bach wrote most of his flute music. But as you read the notes which accompany these two discs you can't help noticing how often the words "possibly" and "probably" appear. There are even works which are of doubtful authenticity, one (in A major Vol.2) in which Terence Charlston has had to do some re-construction work to provide the sonata with a conclusion. There is one sonata (in G major Vol.2) which is a completely legitimate arrangement by Charlston of a sonata which Bach wrote for two flutes and continuo. But these questions, and the editorial work which the performers lay out so clearly in the booklets, are not something to worry about. In fact, for me, it adds to their value almost involving the listener in the research, making one long to dig through the piles of music still in Leipzig with the hope of finding the pages of the A Major sonata "which were torn off and never pasted back", or to find the letters or documents that would establish who they were written for, and in the case of the E flat and G minor sonatas whether they are genuine J.S.Bach.

The music collected on these two CDs lets us hear the versatility of Bach's invention. On the first disc there is a solo Partita which consists of four dance movements which Solomon plays with marvellous flexibility, using the unevenness of Bach's phrases to inject syncopations into the flow. There are four sonatas, including the B minor sonata, generally considered to be the finest of all, and the beautiful E minor sonata which Solomon confesses is his particular favourite.

On the second disc there are four sonatas which include the most popular G minor and E flat sonatas which ironically turn out to be the two that are "probably" not by Bach. The disc also includes three short, but delightful trios.

Solomon and Charlston are precise in phrasing and ensemble. They use delicate hesitations and flexible ritardandos to breathe life into the music. The baroque flute has a softer, sweeter and breathier sound than the modern flute. Together with the harpsichord, but with no string bass, the music has the clarity of crystal. Most often the music consists of three lines of contrapuntal music where every note matters - on these superbly recorded discs you can hear every one of them." (Rod Biss Sunday Star Times)

"A view from the keywell Keyboard players of all eras have acknowledged and esteemed those rare composers who can write a well-crafted keyboard part. Bach's Keyboard style is a marriage of intention and execution. His keyboard writing presents many difficulties for the human hand to negotiate but it is never unplayable. Likewise, the quality of his musical ideas distracts our attention from more obvious chordal and figural techniques which in lesser hands descend into the doggerel of empty note-spinning. He plays subtle games with our wit incorporating non-keyboard textures derived from vocal and string music (a knack learnt by arranging music for different forces). If the devil is in the detail, then the angels maintain the over-all effect and any blurring of the stylistic image is offset by the ingenuity of construction and the fluency of writing. The works in this second volume of Bach's music for solo flute break new ground in terms of keyboard technique. From an eighteenth-century keyboard player's perspective, they could easily have been called 'Sonatas for solo harpsichord with obbligato flute': a common title of the time which stresses the independence of the flute part from the harpsichordists right hand. These sonatas depart strikingly from the basso continuo style in which only the bass part is written with chord indicated in shorthand and Bach dictates the exact notes that each hand should play. By almost eliminating the opportunities for improvisational display, the harpsichordist is 'obliged' to take the lions share of the notes. Thus, in direct contrast to the demure bass lines of the continuo sonatas in volume one, the accompaniment now has many roles to fulfil. Like an orchestra in a concerto, it must be self-sufficient, first initiating the conversation then taking part in it. As in opera, it also provides the dramatic impetus for its partner to express sentiment. Most importantly, in Bach's hands, the keyboard part changes role within movements, exploiting the tension between counterpoint and chords or between background and foreground. This in turn brings positive benefits to the flautist who is liberated from having to generate every melodic idea, allowing the occasional breathing space and opportunity to display a greater range of tone colour and articulation. As with later chamber works which increasingly feature the keyboard, such as Rameau's Piéces de Clavecin en Concert or Mozart's violin sonatas, the melody instrument is reliant upon the keyboard not only to complete the harmonic frame but as an equal partner in the elegant discourse of themes. The authorship of the G Minor and ever popular Eb Major Sonatas has been called into question and, with the C Major Sonata (vol.1), they were excluded from the recent complete edition of Bach's music (the NBA). Another work with a chequered history, the A major Sonata has suffered the indignity of loosing half its first movement. Although it is undoubtedly an authentic work of J.S. Bach, it has required completion to be included on the disc. Taking our cue from Bach's own well established practice of revising and re-arranging his music, we have presumed to make our own arrangements of the authentic trio Sonata (BWV 1039) and three opera dubia (BWV 583, 584 and 586) which suit our medium and stand well as pieces in their own right. The A major Sonata (BWV 1032) is conjectured to be an arrangement of a trio sonata in C Major (now lost.) It survives in an unusual manuscript written in Bach's own hand with a concerto for two harpsichords (BWV 1062) occupying the top staves of each page to which the flute sonata was added in the three unused staves at the bottom, presumably to save paper. Unfortunately, a section of the Flute sonata was cut out to enable a copyist to make performance parts but these sections were never pasted back! Until these pages turn up again, the first movement of BWV 1032 remains a mutilated torso. My completion of the first movement is one of several possible solutions using only material derived from the existing 61 bars. I have balanced the key scheme and thematic exposition of what has survived with an additional 61 bars which correspond to the missing section of the autograph. BWV 1032 may have been arranged for performance with Leipzig Collegium musicum about the same time at the great B minor Sonata (BWV 1030), and written for, or at least inspired by, the great flautist Buffardin of Dresden. Spitta dates the work to about 1736. The galant-style first and second movements would have been appreciated as 'up-to-the-minute' by Frederick the Great's court in Dresden while the grainy counterpoint and technical demands of the seemingly innocent last movement would have been relished by the flute virtuoso or an accompanist of the quality of C.P.E. Bach. The G Minor Sonata (BWV 1020) and the Eb Major Sonata (BWV 1031) are equally and obviously galant and could well have been written during the 1730s at about the same time as the A Major Sonata. It has been suggested that, if the Eb Sonata was written by J.S. Bach, it could have been the model for the G Minor, which is perhaps from the pen of C.P.E. Bach. Given the similarity of design this seems very plausible. The first movements separate the flute and keyboard along concerto lines and with different material. The slow second movements emphasise the lyrical qualities of the flute. In the last movements, the dichotomy is resolved, the themes are shared out and the music demands an equal agility from both instruments. The charming Sonata in G Major (BWV 1039), originally for two flutes and basso continuo, also exists in two arrangements by Bach for viola da gamba and harpsichord (BWV 1027) and for organ (BWV 1027a). My arrangement follows the text of BWV 1039 throughout, the right hand of the harpsichord taking the second flute part, except in the third movement where it takes the top part (as in BWV 1027). In the last movement, one passage in the right hand (bars 88-94 to note 3) has been transposed down an octave. The three trio movements (BWV 583, 584 and 586) survive as organ pieces in which the organist's hands take a treble line each while the bass is played by the feet. Such pieces, although common in Bach's organ music, were a recent innovation associated with the technical development of his organist sons, especially Wilhelm Friedemann. The idiom of these organ trios (if not the notes!) were often pirated from existing chamber music and Bach drew both from his own music (e.g. BWV 528, 1027a) or from the music of others (e.g. Couperin BWV 587). BWV 583 is the most extended of the three and exploits unusually short phrases in close imitation (such as we find in the slow movement of the second Brandenburg Concerto.) We transpose it up a tone. BWV 584 is a trio version of the first 30 bars of an aria (Ich will an den Himmel denken) from Cantata 166. BWV 586 is possibly an arrangement of a harpsichord piece by Telemann or a re-working of material from it. Its only source appears to have been associated with the Leipzig Collegium musicum but was destroyed in 1945."
(Terence Charlston)