Ernst Wilhelm Wolf: Selected Works for Clavier

Album review

Here, Flora Fabri interprets the highly praised sonatas and a fantasy by Ernst Wilhelm Wolf on a "tangent grand". The ingenious invention of this grand piano for the time around 1770 is an intermediate form of clavichord, harpsichord and fortepiano. When a key is struck, a wooden stick with a leather head is struck against the string from below, and a second stick dampens the string again.

"Wolf [...] belongs not only [...] among our classical and best composers in any subject, but is also original". More recognition seems hardly possible from the perspective of the "Sturm und Drang": the introduction that Ernst Ludwig Gerber chooses in 1792 to his encyclopedia article on Ernst Wilhelm Wolf paints in a few words the picture of an original genius whose artistic uniqueness dominates a maximum of professional expertise. He was a pupil of Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel. In Gotha he became acquainted with the music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Carl Heinrich Graun, which strongly influenced him. Above all, he appreciated the works of C. P. E. Bach, with whom he had a lifelong friendship. At the University of Jena he was mainly engaged in music, and he was given the direction of the Collegium musicum, which gave him the opportunity to perform his own compositions. © CPO