Six Sinfonias, W. 182
Program Notes by Martin Pearlman
By the early 1770's, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was established as Telemann's successor in Hamburg, where he directed music in various churches. Having served nearly thirty years at the court of Frederick the Great, he was already at least as famous and influential as a composer and keyboard player as his father had been in his time.
One of C. P. E. Bach's great admirers was the music enthusiast and Austrian ambassador to Prussia, Baron Gottfried van Swieten. It was he who would later introduce Mozart and Haydn to many of the works of J. S. Bach and Handel and who would write the librettos to Haydn's oratorios The Creation and The Seasons. On a visit to Hamburg to see C. P. E. Bach, van Swieten commissioned him to write a set of symphonies in which, according their contemporary, Johann Friedrich Reichardt, Bach would "give himself free rein, without regard to the difficulties of execution which were bound to arise." The result was a set of six symphonies for strings and continuo completed in 1773. Reichardt wrote of their "original and bold flow of ideas. Hardly has ever a more noble, daring, or humorous musical work issued from the pen of a genius."
These sinfonias have all the qualities that are so characteristic of C. P. E. Bach's musical personality: virtuosic string writing, quirky changes of mood and harmony, and slow movements that take us into the world of the Empfindsamer Stil, the "sensitive" or intimate and introspective style with its arresting chromatic harmonies and highly expressive, melancholy sighing figures. There are dramatic moments that remind us of the Sturm und Drang symphonies that Haydn was writing at the same time. There are also lighter movements, to be sure, but even here there are sometimes surprising harmonic twists under a simple surface.
Reichardt wrote of these sinfonias, "It would be a great loss for art if these masterpieces were to remain hidden away in private hands." Yet they were indeed lost for a time and, on being rediscovered, they were at first mistakenly published as string quartets. The error has been rectified and they have been republished in good editions, but they are still too infrequently heard in concerts today.
Boston Baroque Performances
Sinfonia in B-flat Major, W. 182, No. 2
November 26, 1990
University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH
Martin Pearlman, conductor
November 16, 1990
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
Sinfonia in C Major, W. 182, No. 3
November 11, 1988
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor