Albrecht Mayer - Bach Generations

Albrecht Mayer's new album is an impressive testimony to the family tree of the Bach family. It features works by members of three generations of the Bach family, beginning with Johann Sebastian's great-uncle Johann Christoph and ending with two of his sons. This compilation can be described as a musical calling card for the Bach family. The earliest piece is an instrumental arrangement of Johann Christoph Bach's lament "Ach, dass ich Wassers g'nug hätte", which was composed in its original version for alto and strings in Eisenach in the early 1670s. The expressive piece is full of shrill dissonances that reflect the fact that in the sung text the human soul, plagued by sin, weeps floods of tears. Johann Sebastian's tasks were many and varied, and his surviving works are correspondingly diverse. The Concerto in A major BWV 1055 is an exuberantly playful piece that almost certainly dates from his time in Cöthen. Although it has only come down to us in a version for harpsichord and strings that Bach arranged in Leipzig in the late 1730s, no doubt for his Collegium Musicum, the lively interplay between solo and tutti suggests that the original work dates from a somewhat earlier time and was probably written in Cöthen around 1721. There is much to suggest that the original solo instrument was an oboe. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the aria "Sanfte soll mein Todesschlummer" from the Easter Oratorio dates from Bach's Leipzig years. The pastoral number with its gently swaying accompaniment was originally intended for a lost cantata written in 1725 for the birthday of Duke Christian von Sachsen-Weißenfels. Its melody is just as memorable as that of the immortal "Air" and the playful Badinerie, making it one of Bach's best-known instrumental works. Other works on this album include the aria "Bist du bei mir" by Bach's colleague Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel, Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach's Concerto for keyboard instruments, strings and basso continuo in A major and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's Concerto for keyboard instruments, strings and basso continuo in G major.

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