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Léon Berben's recording - the first volume of a projected series devoted to Wilhelm Friedemann Bach's keyboard music - was issued to mark the three hundredth anniversary of the composer's birth in 2010. Friedemann's tercentenary also saw the publication of two monographs (by David Schulenberg and Ulrich Kahmann respectively), while a thoroughly revised and updated version of Martin Falck's thematic catalogue of 1913 was completed by the established Bach scholar Peter Wollny in 2009 (to be published by Carus as volume 2 of the series Bach-Repertorium; the numbers are listed in Wollny, 'Bach, §III: (8) Wilhelm Friedemann Bach', in Grove Music Online <www.oxfordmusiconline.com> (27 February 2012)). The works selected by Berben for this CD, and performed on harpsichord, comprise an Overture in E flat (numbered by Wollny br-wfb a59), two fantasias (in E minor, Fk21/br-wfb a42, and D minor, br-wfb A105), two sonatas (in D major, Fk3/br-wfb a4, and F major, br-wfb A10) and a Minuet in F with variations (br-wfb a50b), alongside a concerto for solo keyboard (Concerto in G, Fk40/br-wfb a13b) in the manner of Johann Sebastian Bach's Italian Concerto. Together these works represent both the early and late stages of Friedemann's career; only two (the Sonata in D major and the Fantasia in E minor) have been recorded previously. Berben's recording also complements a new critical edition of the composer's oeuvre, currently in preparation under the direction of Peter Wollny (who completed a doctoral dissertation on Friedemann in 1993). The keyboard works on this disc - transmitted in manuscript copies, apart from the D major sonata - are drawn from the first two volumes of this new complete edition being produced by the Bach-Archiv Leipzig, with support from the Packard Humanities Institute, Los Altos, California, and published by Carus.
Comparisons between the music of Friedemann and that of his father are perhaps inevitable, given that the former's name is most often encountered in connection with the Clavier-Büchlein vor W. F. Bach - a manuscript collection of keyboard music...