The Bach flute-and-continuo sonatas presented on this two-disc set fall into two groups. The ones on the first set are, by general consensus, Bach's own work, while the connections with Bach of the second group are more tenuous. All the pieces were listed in the Bach Werke Verzeichnis from which Bach's works take their conventional catalog numbers, but some of them have been deauthenticated as new information has come to light. Paradoxically, it's the second disc that's of the most interest here. The notes by keyboardist ...
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The Bach flute-and-continuo sonatas presented on this two-disc set fall into two groups. The ones on the first set are, by general consensus, Bach's own work, while the connections with Bach of the second group are more tenuous. All the pieces were listed in the Bach Werke Verzeichnis from which Bach's works take their conventional catalog numbers, but some of them have been deauthenticated as new information has come to light. Paradoxically, it's the second disc that's of the most interest here. The notes by keyboardist Ingomar Rainer go into quite a bit of detail about these pieces and advance an intriguing hypothesis about them that is in turn convincingly represented in the performances. The background is that the first three works on disc two are thought to be works by Bach's students -- his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in the first two cases and a composer names J.C. Altnikol in the third -- but written with considerable input from the master himself. Rainer points to thematic linkages among...
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