Minuet in G major and G minor
BWV Anhang 114-115 performed by Shuxian Ding
Maltezerhuis, Utrecht
Behind the music
Story
Story
Extra videos
Extra videos
Credits
Credits
Cherished; never to be forgotten
The best-known piece of all by … Petzold
There is no surviving portrait of Anna Magdalena Bach, and her biography is no more than a sketch. No wonder then that her handwriting – copies of Johann Sebastian’s solo works for violin and cello, various other copies, and her two Notenbüchlein – has been studied in minute detail. The Büchlein, in particular, contains a varied collection: music by father Bach and the children, but also pieces from outside the family. Can we learn anything from her pen strokes? What role did she play in the family concern? And do the works she notated say anything about who she was? The mysteries are still far from being solved.
One thing is clear, however: nobody by the name of Bach wrote the little work that Shuxian Ding is playing here. Anna Magdalena copied two minuets (BWV Anhang 114 & 115) from an extensive suite by Christian Petzold, a man you could safely call a confidant of the Bachs. His ties with the family were both musical and professional, as Petzold helped with the sale of Partita BWV 826.
At the start of his career, Petzold went to Prague and Vienna, in order to ‘listen to eminent Masters and converse with them’. These conversations were apparently a success, as back in Dresden he had enough stock-in-trade for a position at the court chapel in Dresden. There, he performed and composed alongside stars like the violinist Pisendel and the bassist Zelenka, with whom he went on tour to Paris and Venice in 1714-16. Moreover, from 1703 Petzold had a regular seat at the organ of the church of St Sophia, in Dresden, where he inaugurated the new instrument by Silbermann, in 1720, with a large-scale cantata. And we also know that he performed two of Johann Sebastian Bach’s organ concertos on that legendary organ. Contemporaries counted him among the best of the best, although precious little Petzold has been handed down to us. Except for this minuet, the minuet, which for very many years was attributed to Bach the great Thomaskantor. Sometimes fate takes a surprising turn.
Young talent
Once every two or three years, the Netherlands Bach Society organises a talent development project for gifted young musicians under the age of 18. The projects, which focus on the performance practice of Bach’s music, allows us to bring talented youngsters into contact with historical performance practice and give them deeper insight into Bach’s music. In this project, we worked with keyboardists of the future. Seven very talented international youngsters between twelve and eighteen years old were selected from auditions to take two masterclasses about Bach, the harpsichord and baroque playing techniques and styles, given by Siebe Henstra. Each keyboardist rehearsed movements from the Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, including the Nine Little Preludes, BWV 924-932, which Bach wrote to use in lessons with his son Wilhelm Friedemann. The rehearsed works were recorded for All of Bach in October 2024, at the Maltezerhuis in Utrecht.
- BWV
- 114-115 Anhang
- Title
- Minuet in G major and G minor
- Instrument
- harpsichord
- Genre
- harpsichord works
- Serie
- Notenbüchlein für Anna Magdalena Bach
- Special notes
- These minuets have long been attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach, but were composed by Christian Petzold (1677 - 1733)
Extra videos
Vocal texts
Original
Translation
Credits
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- Release date
- 1 May 2025
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- Recording date
- 16 October 2024
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- Location
- Maltezerhuis, Utrecht
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- Harpsichord
- Shuxian Ding
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- Instrument
- Titus Crijnen, 1992 after Johannes Ruckers, 1638
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- Director and camera
- Robin van Erven-Dorens
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- Music recording
- Guido Tichelman, Pim van der Lee
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- Music recording, edit and mix
- Guido Tichelman
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- Camera
- Martijn van Beenen
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- Lights
- Ernst-Jan Thieme
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- Data handling
- Brechtje van Riel
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- Assistant music recording
- Marloes Biermans
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- Producer
- Lisanne Marlou de Kok
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