This album is part of a series, released on the Capriccio label in 1991 and devoted to the keyboard music of
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. It was reissued on Phoenix Edition in 2011, by which time there were still very few choices for most of the music. Consider the two sets of Kurze und leichte Clavierstücke (Short and Easy Keyboard Pieces) recorded here. Student works, they represent
C.P.E. Bach's musical thinking in miniature structures in some cases just a few seconds long. They're consistently intriguing. Various keyboardists are represented in the series; this one features Britain's
Linda Nicholson playing a clavichord. That's an attraction in itself. The clavichord was quite common as a domestic instrument, and when one is used for sonatas like the three
C.P.E. Bach works included here, there's no need to try to explain the dynamic markings that sometimes appear in his music, for the clavichord, unlike the harpsichord, was capable of dynamic gradations.
Nicholson doesn't stint in applying them, favoring heavy left-hand chords that make the music seem even choppier and quirkier than in other readings. Yet the small Kurze und leichte Clavierstücke included (21 of them in all) make quite clear the degree to which these qualities were basic to
C.P.E.'s language. The Keyboard Sonata in D minor, Wq 50/4, is a good example of the composer's Sturm und Drang idiom, and it is here where
Nicholson's approach is at its strongest. Recommended, especially for those who have never heard music of this period played on a clavichord; even some of
Mozart's early keyboard pieces benefit from being performed this way.