Solo Keyboard Music, Vol. 28

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's 'Zweyte Fortsetzung' Sonatas are, as the title implies, a sequel to a previous collection, namely the famous Sonatas with Varied Reprises, published in 1760. Only one year later a first sequel - the six 'Fortsetzung' Sonatas - had followed, and in 1763 the time had come for the 'Second Sequel', six sonatas of which the first three appear on the present disc. The original set had been very successful upon its publication, possibly because it included written-out 'improvisations' for sections that were to be repeated ('varied reprises'). This feature was more or less absent from the two sequels, raising the question if the naming of them was more of a marketing trick by the composer himself, or his publisher. Also worth noting is that the second sequel includes two sonatas composed much earlier than the rest of the set: No.1 in E flat major from 1747 and No.4 in F sharp minor from 1744. Stylistically these differ radically from the other sonatas in the set, but the composer must nevertheless have found them worthy of inclusion. Although Bach abstained from providing varied reprises for the present sonatas, we are fortunate in that an alternative version of the first movement of Sonata No.3 exists in which the composer's own variations and embellishments of the movement have been preserved. Miklós Spányi includes it here, together with two sonatas both composed in the 1760s but otherwise unrelated to the set.