The most recent of Florilegium’s discs is a Bach family anthology featuring three members of the clan whose music seldom finds its way into record catalogues. Pieces by J. S. Bach’s eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, and youngest son by his second marriage, Johann Christian, complete this particular family gathering.
The earliest representative is Georg Christoph, one of Sebastian Bach’s uncles. He was, for a time, town Kantor at Schweinfurt in Franconia where in 1684 he received a visit on his birthday from his two brothers. Georg Christoph was so delighted that, shortly afterwards, he wrote a cantata to record the event, Siehe, wie fein und lieblich (“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity”). Tenors Julian Podger and Robert Evans, with bass Michael McCarthy, provide a well-focused and evenly balanced ensemble seemingly to savour the spirit in which the piece was written.
Next in the family chronology comes Johann Bernhard Bach, a cousin of J. S. B. who held important posts as organist at Magdeburg, Telemann’s birthplace, and then Eisenach where he was also chamber harpsichordist in the court orchestra of which Telemann became Konzertmeister in 1707. Not a great deal of his music survives but among that which does are four orchestral suites which Johann Bernhard probably composed at Eisenach and which may well have resulted from his exposure to those of Telemann who was already a fluent master of the form. It is a pity that Florilegium saw fit to include only three short dances from the Fourth Suite in D major. The music is well worth performing without omission.
The highly gifted but emotionally complex Wilhelm Friedemann is represented by the long-admired, poignant and oft recorded Adagio and Fugue in D minor for two flutes and strings, and by one of his several Duettos for two flutes, this one in E minor. Florilegium, corporately and individually, play the music with heartfelt expression and a sensibility that mirrors the stylistic idiom.
It is the music of J. S. Bach’s nephew and pupil, Johann Ernst which occupies the greater part of the programme. He was the son of Johann Bernhard whom he succeeded as town organist and court harpsichordist at Eisenach in 1749. This member of the family seems wholeheartedly to have embraced the early classical idiom, further demonstrating, both in the Violin Sonata in F minor and in the four songs selected from his Sammlung auserlesener Fabeln, that he was a composer with a distinctive and affecting musical vocabulary at his disposal. Catherine Bott gives warmly expressive performances, savouring the considerable lyrical content of a little-known area of Bach family industry.
The prodigious talent of this dynasty once again reaches a peak in Florilegium’s programme with a Quartet in G major by Johann Christian, the ‘London Bach’. Scored for the unusual grouping of violin, two cellos and obbligato harpsichord or fortepiano it was issued in this form, posthumously, by the publisher Giovanni Andre. The work is probably an early one, however, which was also printed posthumously in an adaptation for keyboard with accompanying violin in about 1785. Musically speaking, the expansive opening movement is especially engaging but the entire work is played with elegance and charm by these artists.
In summary, this is varied and enjoyable entertainment, well off the beaten track, but the absence of any translation from the German of the texts of the four songs is regrettable.'