Wilhem Friedemann Bach's compositional work can be characterised overall as a permanent conflict between high artistic standards and the need to make concessions to playability, audience taste and contemporary under­standing of music. However, as the eldest son of the famous Thomaskantor, he was only willing to a limited extent to subordinate his musical ideals to external constraints, as numerous contemporary anecdotes and documents attest. He preferred to accept being considered an outsider and deliberately moved his art beyond the boundary that Gotthold Ephraim Lessing described as the threshold at which the common people couldn't distinguish the true from the false'. This uncompromising attitude not only shaped his contemporary failures, but also explains the enduring fascination that his work exerts today.

Artists

Benjamin Appl (baritone), Helene Salome, Franz Haselböck, Hans Helmut Tillmanns (organ), Adalbert Kraus, Arleen Auger (soprano), Helen Watts (contralto), Claudia Schubert, Wilfried Jochens, Barbara Schlick (soprano), Stephan Schreckenberger, Berlin Barock Solisten, Kölner Kammerorchester, Gächinger Kantorei, Bach-Collegium Stuttgart, Rheinische Kantorei, Reinhard Goebel, Helmuth Rilling, Hermann Max