This release is part of a large reissue series covering music of
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach; the original albums appeared in the late 1980s on the Capriccio label and were licensed anew by Phoenix Edition in 2011. Few recordings of any of the music appeared in the intervening years, and
C.P.E.'s enormous output remained largely unexplored. These two oboe concertos,
Bach's only ones for the instrument, bear few traces of the experimental spirit that characterizes the composer's keyboard music; they are competent examples of the sunny, "natural" style in vogue in the middle of the 18th century (the concertos were apparently composed in 1765). The booklet notes (lamentably translated into English) claim that the Oboe Concerto in E flat major, the second concerto but the first one on the program, "conjures up the spirit of the newly dawning 'Sturm und Drang,'" the dramatic "storm and stress" style that heavily influenced
Haydn in the 1770s. But sample the opening movement (track 1), which resembles an operatic soprano aria but is not especially adventurous harmonically. Each movement of these two concertos is laid out on a broad harmonic plan, with the oboe taking quite a few little detours, and the contrast with the concerto by Johann Christian Bach that rounds out the disc is telling: even when he was being galant,
C.P.E. Bach did not sound much like J.C. Bach. The performances are just fair; oboist
Burkhard Glaetzner handles the difficult solo parts well, but the
Neues Bachisches Collegium Musicum Leipzig (in the two
C.P.E. Bach works) seems tense and doesn't catch the graceful quality of the music. The early CD-era sound is another problem; recorded in a church, it lends an unpleasant muddy edge to the strings. The album can still be recommended to fans of
J.S. Bach's second surviving son.