Marais / Bach / Bach / Dieupart / Steffani: Bach’s Library – Bach Players

   in Early Music Today (Dec, 2014)
The full contents of J. S. Bach’s library – like the personality of the composer himself – remain a matter for conjecture. Nevertheless, we do know some of what he possessed and valued. This disc features music by four composers whose work he is known to have studied, placed alongside Bach’s own Ouverture in B minor for flute and strings. This last-mentioned provides an interesting juxtaposition with an Ouverture in G major by Bach’s second cousin Johann Bernhard Bach that, with its mixture of French and Italian elements, is typical of much music belonging to mid-Germany and Saxony in the first half of the 18th century. The harpsichord suite by Charles …