Bach, C.P.E.: Keyboard Sonatas
Carole Cerasi, harpsichord/fortepiano; Metronome METCD1032. Format not specified, 67:27.
The problem with Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach has always been knowing what to do with him. Too radical for the galant crowd, too mannered for the Sturm und Drang enthusiasts, too quirky even for those who claim to love him—he occupies a peculiar, uncomfortable space in music history that makes programming difficult and interpretation treacherous.
Carole Cerasi understands this. Better yet, she embraces it.
Her selection here—six sonatas drawn from outside the published collections, one per decade of C.P.E.‘s creative life—offers something more valuable than a greatest-hits compilation. What emerges is a portrait of restless invention, of a composer who never quite settled into predictability. The E minor Sonata, W.65/5 (H.13), dates from the 1730s, when Bach was still finding his voice at Frederick the Great’s court. The G major, W.65/48 (H.280), comes from the Hamburg years, when his style had grown both more expansive and more elliptical.
Cerasi divides the program intelligently between two instruments: a double-manual harpsichord by Bruce Kennedy (after Mietcke, c. 1704) for the earlier works, a fortepiano by Jean Boscou (after Stein, early 1780s) for the later. This isn’t mere antiquarian fastidiousness—it reflects the evolution in C.P.E.‘s own thinking about keyboard sonority and dynamic nuance. The harpsichord pieces traffic in terraced dynamics, abrupt shifts of register, the kind of textural contrasts that exploit what the instrument does best. Listen to the quasi-orchestral "finale" of H.13, where Cerasi negotiates those wild registral leaps with crisp articulation and rhythmic bite.
But the fortepiano works demand something else entirely. The flourishes opening the "Allegro" assai of the B-flat Sonata, H.211—Cerasi tosses them off with just the right mixture of bravura and nonchalance, understanding that C.P.E.‘s gestures often work best when they sound half-improvised, dangerous, on the edge of coming apart. Which they sometimes do. That’s part of the point.
The E minor Sonata, H.66, presents itself as a suite—Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, three Menuets, Gigue—and here Cerasi’s sense of dance rhythm proves essential. She doesn’t treat these movements as museum pieces. The Allemande has genuine courtly grace without stiffness; the Gigue sparkles with wit rather than mere brightness. Between them, the Sarabande unfolds with that peculiar C.P.E. mixture of ornamental profusion and harmonic daring that can still sound unsettling.
Which brings us to the real challenge: those harmonic twists, those angular phrases, those moments where C.P.E. seems to deliberately wrong-foot the listener. The "Andante" of the C major Sonata, H.248, sounds almost pointillist—sparse, fragmentary, modern in ways that have nothing to do with period style. Cerasi doesn’t try to smooth this over or make it more palatable. She plays it straight, trusting the composer’s vision even when it leads into strange territory.
The Kennedy harpsichord has a lively, bright sound—perhaps a touch too bright in the upper register, though the recording captures it without harshness. The Boscou fortepiano offers rounder, more graduated tone colors, and Cerasi exploits its capacity for dynamic shading in the later works. Her touch remains remarkably consistent across both instruments: clean, precise, but never rigid.
Not everything here is equally compelling. The B-flat Sonata, H.51, meanders a bit in its opening Poco "allegro"—those “seemingly improvisatory gestures” that the liner notes praise sometimes feel genuinely aimless rather than artfully spontaneous. And the Andantino of H.280, while genteel and civilized, lacks the edge that makes C.P.E. interesting.
But these are minor quibbles. What matters is that Cerasi has given us a C.P.E. Bach recital that actually sounds like it was made by someone who finds this music fascinating rather than merely important. The "Adagio" e sostenuto of H.280—intimate, sparse, harmonically adventurous—receives a performance of real concentration and expressive depth. You hear Cerasi thinking through the music, responding to its implications, making choices that illuminate without editorializing.
The sixty-seven minutes pass quickly, which is perhaps the highest compliment one can pay a C.P.E. Bach recital. This is music that can feel interminable in unsympathetic hands. Cerasi makes it compulsive—not by prettifying it or domesticating its strangeness, but by taking it seriously on its own uncompromising terms.
A distinguished achievement, and further proof that Carole Cerasi deserves wider recognition as one of the more thoughtful period keyboardists working today.
