C.P.E. Bach: Cello Concertos - Christophe Coin

Album review

Mozart explicitly alluded to the influence of C.P.E. Bach on his own music, and you can hear it in these three cello concertos, written in the early 1750s, even though Mozart did not write cello concertos of his own. Mozart's treatment of the solo part in a concerto, having the soloist ask questions as well as simply elaborating on the basic thematic material, seems akin to what you get in C.P.E.'s opening movements. This was cutting-edge music in the 1750s, with the Cello Concerto in A minor, Wq 170, pointing toward the dramatic empfindsamer Stil that was to come, and toward Mozart's expansive concerto designs in the Cello Concerto in A major, Wq 172. C.P.E. Bach himself had no doubts about the influence of these concertos; he went on to arrange them for flute and for keyboard. They are delightful works with many small, trenchant details. Cellist Christophe Coin, playing and directing the Orquesta Barroca de Sevilla, has a slight tendency to make these pieces sound like French Baroque music, with a flat dynamic in the dotted-rhythm passages, and Passacaille's church sound is rather harsh. The recording was made in 2014 but not released until 2018, for unspecified reasons. However, better late than never; these are important works by C.P.E. Bach, not easy to obtain on recordings.

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