Wednesday, 9 April 2008, 7.45pm

Fortepiano recital at Letchworth Music Club
Howgills, 42 South View, Letchworth

CPE Bach and all that followed…
Schantz fortepiano

For further details go to the Letchworth Music Club website

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Thursday, 6 March 2008, 7.30pm

Fortepiano recital at Spiro Ark
The Spiro Ark Centre
25-26 Enford St.
London, W1

CPE Bach and all that followed…
Schantz fortepiano

For further details go to the Spiro Ark website

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The following was posted in the International Record Review Magazine, September 2007

(Transcribed)
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

the first two discs in this survey of varied keyboard releases are of fortepiano works by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. The first contains four Sonatas, three Rondos and a Fantasia played by Sharona Joshua on an instrument by Christopher Barlow after a 1795 fortepiano by Johann Schantz. Apart from his music, CPE Bach’s legacy is complemented by his Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, which he revised extensively just before his death in 1788, and in which his statement that ‘a musician cannot move others unless he too is moved’ remains as the most succinct summation of the ideal nature of music-making.

one can take this too far - for, as Basil Lam described, CPE Bach’s startling effects can appear to be those of a composer who expresses himself by way of a ‘too-easy style in which anything can happen’. In this case, a fine line has surely to be drawn between the ‘effects’ and their effectiveness in performance in so far as they impinge on the inner life of the music, often expressed in eighteenth-century music in relatively unvarying tempos, before the rise of the notion of Romantic Empfindsamkeit. Yet, it is clear from his essay that, so far as CPE Bach was concerned, expressive feeling was not to be abjured in performance; and it is this fine line between emotion and intellect, shall we say, that Joshua draws from so well.

Here is a beautifully played and recorded disc, and the music itself rarely exhibits that characteristic to which Lam objected; there is nothing wrong in striking out new paths in music, as in any art, so long as the result makes sense to the recipient - in this case, us. Joshua combines scholarship with genuine musical understanding and an excellent technique. I recommend this disc strongly to those keen to explore keyboard music of the latter half of the eighteenth century, outside of Haydn and Mozart.
(Rubato Records RRLA1104U, 1 hour 15 minutes).

Robert Matthew-Walker
International Record Review

Reviews for my CPE Bach CD are now starting to come in.

The following was posted in The Herald Newspaper on the 18th of August 2007

(Transcribed)
CPE Bach: Fortepiano Works
Sharona Joshua
Rubato Records
£12.99 ***** (5 star)

Much is known about the life of CPE Bach, son of JS. Much less is known about his music. Some see it as transitional, between one era [the Baroque] and another [the Classical]. The music itself is seldom played.

You have to wonder why, listening to israeli pianist Sharona Joshua’s stunning performances in this collection of sonatas and fantasias. The breathtaking originality of the playing, wonderfully appropriate on the early fortepiano, with its intimate, dry tone, catches every revolutionary nuance of Bach’s unsung genius. If CPE Bach’s day ever comes then Joshua must be seen as his critical missionary.

On sale at www.sharonajoshua.com, [the internet (Amazon, CD Baby, Itunes) and at music shops all over London].

Michael Tumelty (18.08.2007 The Herald)

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Friday, 7 December 2007, 7.30pm

Fortepiano recital at the Matlock Music Club
Wheeldon Hall at Highfields School at Lumsdale, Matlock

CPE Bach and all that followed…
Schantz fortepiano

For further details go to the Matlock Music Club website

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Sunday, 18 November 2007, 7.30pm

Fortepiano recital at Dumfries Music Club
St John’s Church, Lovers Walk, Dumfries, Scotland

CPE Bach and all that followed…
Schantz fortepiano

For further details go to the Dumfries Music Society website
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