These recordings (1974) come from Pan104 titled Complete and Authentic Works from the Neue Bach Gesellshaft. There is one more sonata which is agreed on to be authentic, but it is incomplete in the 1st movement. It will be found in Vol2. i The traverso was made by Engelhard of Nuernberg, who was born in 1758. The pitch is A=419 herz. This flute is from the de Wit collection in Amsterdam and was kindly lent by the owner for the recording. The harpsichord is an Italian replica, similar to the one used for the Italian harpsichord recording, except for a nasard stop, an additional row of jacks close to the plucking point.
A new two-disc set of Bach flute sonatas is the latest delight to capture my fancy. There's a mathematical precision to the music of Bach, an evocation of gears and machinery, and of myriad intricate pieces meshing together. But somehow, all this precision results in something that's not at all mechanical. In fact, it's downright sensuous. In the best hands, Bach's music conjures up images not unlike the opening credits of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory--a complicated series of moving parts, processing in balletic swirls and creating chocolate kisses.
Even against the incredibly difficult and nearly divine Partita in A Minor for solo flute, BWV 1013 (a relative to the partitas for unaccompanied violin), and
The biography of Bach written by Johann Nicolaus Forkel (1749-1818) and published in 1802, based on conversations with Bach's sons Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel and on other first-hand sources, remains the foundation of Bach historical scholarship. In his catalogue of Bach's compositions Forkel regrettably passes over the flute sonatas with barely a comment: Many single Sonatas for the harpsichord with accompaniment of violin, flute, viola da gamba, &c., all admirably composed and so that even in our days most of them would be heard by connoisseurs with pleasure.
