Bach: Anna Magdalena Notebooks, 1722 and 1725

This is fly-on-the-wall stuff—a unique opportunity to eavesdrop on musicmaking in the Bach household in the early 1720s. Harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani and soprano Carolyn Sampson guide us through the two “notebooks” which once belonged to Bach’s second wife, Anna Magdalena. They contain her favourite arias—she was a singer—and what most delighted her fingers. Esfahani’s yearning “Aria” makes us long for a whole Goldberg Variations on the clavichord. “Bist du bei mir”,one of the most haunting of 18th-century melodies (by Gottfried Stölzel), gets two performances: one lavishly ornamented by Sampson; the other, at the end of the recording, is a drawing-room performance with hushed clavichord accompaniment. The centrepiece, “Schlummert ein” from Bach’s cantata Ich habe genug, paints an intimate portrait of domestic musical contentment, Sampson thoroughly convincing us of Anna’s talent as a singer.