Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century/Alexander Janiczek (violin)
Glossa GCD921134 65:43 mins
According to one observer who heard a run-through of the ‘Hamburg Symphonies’ before they were despatched to their dedicatee Baron van Swieten, ‘the original and adventurous trajectory of ideas was heard with delight’. Encouraged by the Baron to be bold and unconstrained by practicalities CPE Bach obliged, producing music that exuberantly ambushes expectations with harmonic daring, dramatic unexpected interruptions and an elevated sensitivity to the expressive possibilities of contrast – both dynamic and rhetorical.
Directing from the violin, Alexander Janiczek galvanises a robust and full-bodied string sound, further enhanced by a conspicuously warm and spacious recording. His characteristic precision and panache inform the irrepressible first movement of the B flat Symphony, which nonetheless coyly flutters its eyelashes, and the players lean into the moody volatility with a swaggering gusto that subsequently resurfaces in the concluding Presto.
There’s a trenchant account, too, of the set’s only minor-key symphony – No. 4 in B minor – its finale quiveringly taut and pugnacious. Offsetting the high-octane verve, however, Janiczek finds an almost Mozartian caress in the Largo of the A major Symphony, and the elegant lyricism of the G major’s Poco Adagio is assailed by a subtle restlessness.
Perhaps some of CPE’s arresting silences don’t always ‘tell’ as much as they might – and there’s a little more raw theatricality in Trevor Pinnock’s much-reissued 1979 release with The English Concert – but the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century is undeniably on fizzing form: stylish, urbane and ever-alert.