Sonates en trio Bwv 525-530

Description

"Bach wrote them for his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann. It was by studying them that Friedemann prepared to become the great organist I later knew. It is impossible to praise the merits of these sonatas [...], they can be considered the masterpiece in this genre." (Johann Nikolaus Forkel, 1802). Masterpiece, indeed! But of an ephemeral "genre." No one before Bach had dared to so methodically reframe, for the organ, the figures and the swirls of a trio sonata for two violins and continuo. Resolved in a collection of six ideally varied sonatas, the equation did not set a precedent. Even today, organists do not rush to program them in concert. Yet everyone goes through them during their years of study, following in the footsteps of young Friedemann. His father had spoiled him. For hand independence (a matter of listening more than mechanics): fifteen Inventions in two voices. Plus a third in fifteen Sinfonias, designed to stimulate, "above all, a cantabile playing, all while contracting a sure foretaste of composition" (Bach in the preface). This dual teaching of playing and writing is at the heart of the six Sonatas BWV 525-530. The brilliant Friedemann could simultaneously refine the independence of his hands and feet, often sketching different ideas (high-flying, not a moment of rest), and observe the mechanics of a completely different writing style, the concerto. Without an orchestra, of course, for only three parts, but concerto through the alternation of ritornellos and solos that the Italians invented in the 1710s. Almost all the fast movements of the six sonatas resort to this. Sonatas for organ? A conventional title. Bach in his splendidly copied autograph refers to the "pedal clavichord" and the "pedal harpsichord." A performance for two harpsichords echoes this in this Indispensable, and two chamber readings show us how evidently and exuberantly the writing of his "compressed" sonatas for the organ can be redeployed. (Gaëtan Naulleau)