Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Keith Jarrett

CD version. Keith Jarrett recorded the six Württemberg Sonatas of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach on a modern grand piano in May 1994, and the tapes stayed in the archive for almost thirty years. Released in 2023, the two-disc set comes from the years in which Jarrett, alongside his improvised concerts, recorded a run of Baroque and twentieth-century keyboard works for ECM. The cycle is usually heard on harpsichord, and the choice of the modern instrument was deliberate.

The session took place at Cavelight Studio, Jarrett's home studio in New Jersey, with Peter Laenger as Tonmeister. Jarrett had already recorded J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations, the French Suites and the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier, plus Handel's keyboard suites and Shostakovich's Preludes and Fugues. "I'd heard the sonatas played by harpsichordists, and felt there was room for a piano version," he says today. He also cites the composer's own maxim that "a musician cannot move others unless he himself is moved". Manfred Eicher is credited as executive producer, and Paul Griffiths wrote the liner notes.

C.P.E. Bach wrote the sonatas in 1742-43 and published them in 1744 with a dedication to Carl Eugen, Duke of Württemberg, who had studied with him at the Berlin court of Frederick the Great. Three are in minor keys, three in major, each in three movements with a slow centre. The music is full of sudden pauses, abrupt shifts of tempo and unexpected harmony, and Jarrett follows every one without exaggerating them. In the Adagio of the second sonata, in A flat, he states the melody boldly, draws back, then returns to it. The Adagio non molto of the B minor sonata opens on a series of dramatic chords before a stately line, repeatedly broken by quicker figures.

The release was widely reviewed. In The Arts Fuse (2023), Michael Ullman wrote that "Jarrett's particular lyrical style fits C.P.E. Bach notably", singling out the slow movements of the second and fourth sonatas. Fiona Maddocks in The Observer described "lithe, intelligent performances". German radio critics were just as warm, and Gramophone placed Jarrett near the top of pianists who have recorded the set.

Double CD on ECM New Series (ECM 2790/91), first released on 30 June 2023, with liner notes by Paul Griffiths.