C.P.E. Bach: Sonatas & Rondos

C.P.E. Bach’s inventive brilliance and often wild, always fertile imagination flowed naturally into his 400-plus works for solo keyboard. Marc-André Hamelin, among the Hyperion label’s brightest stars, strikes an ideal balance between the spontaneous and the calculated, the edgy and the elegant in this selection of sonatas, rondos, fantasies, and character pieces. The French Canadian pianist’s sheer enjoyment of the music is palpable, irresistibly so in the charming Arioso with 9 variations in C Major and heart-melting rondos La complaisante and L’Herrmann. He’s equally compelling in the bold gestures of the Freie Fantasie, a collection of highly concentrated works that can stand comparison with Mozart’s mature keyboard fantasies. Hamelin’s joyful celebration of C.P.E. Bach mines almost half a century of creative adventure to create an essential portrait of the composer and his art.