Composer of the Week: CPE Bach

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Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

Composer of the Week - Brand

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: CPE Bach (1714-1788): Reinvention in Hamburg

Reinvention in Hamburg

CPE Bach (1714-1788)

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, CPE Bach (1714-1788), Reinvention in Hamburg

Donald Macleod explores CPE Bach's time in Hamburg and his prolific vocal writing.

Donald Macleod explores CPE Bach's time in Hamburg, freed from the court of Frederick the Great and embarking on a huge amount of vocal writing.

This week we look at how CPE Bach's music and reputation in the light of the sensational rediscovery of much his archive in 1999. Throughout the week we'll hear recent recordings of this 'new' music. In this episode, Donald Macleod explores CPE Bach’s time in Hamburg, freed from the court of Frederick the Great, and embarking on a huge amount of vocal writing.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach had felt constrained by court life, and never appreciated by the king. On the death of his godfather Telemann, Bach secured the plum job of Kapelmeister in Hamburg. In his new Hamburg post he had to compose at least one new sacred work every week to satisfy the demands of the city’s churches. Bach soon found himself with a large circle of friends, of the kind that he had had in Berlin, including preachers, university professors, and writers and poets – among them the poets Gotthold Lessing and Friedrich Klopstock. In Hamburg, Bach found the time for the extracurricular composing he had always wanted to do.

Magnificat anima mea Dominum, Et misericordia eius, Gloria Patri et Filio, Sicut erat in principio (Magnificat, Wq 215)		
RIAS Kammerchor
Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin
Hans-Christoph Rademann, conductor

Quartet in D Major, Wq 94
Nicholas McGegan, flute
Catherine Mackintosh, viola
Anthony Pleeth, cello
Christopher Hogwood, fortepiano

Rondo in A minor Wq 56 No 5
Christine Schornsheim, clavichord

Gott fähret auf mit Jauchzen, Wq 240 (Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu)
Rheinische Kantorei
Das Kleine Konzert
Hermann Max, conductor

Produced by Iain Chambers for BBC Wales

Composer of the Week: CPE Bach (1714-1788)

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Donald Macleod tells the story of the discovery of a lost archive of CPE Bach manuscripts.

Donald Macleod looks at CPE Bach's music and reputation in the light of the sensational rediscovery of a lost archive of manuscripts in 1999.

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