Francois Chaplin

If you mention CPE Bach to your educated friends, you will get either one of two responses: the more common one is “what is CPE”? The less common says something vague about boredom.

Whence the boredom comes, I am not sure. Until now there have been so few recordings, hardly anyone has had a chance to hear him. The opinion is thus a borrowed one; which makes for an interesting tangent: why are people so quick in passing on a borrowed opinion? I suppose “I don’t know jack ___ but I have heard/read that…” is imagined to pass for erudition?

But perhaps the few recordings available until now have been boring; until recently the musics outside the mainstream were recorded only by nobodies, usually on Hungarian or Icelandic labels; and their object seems to have been to show that any music played sufficiently sans testes tastes like soy burger. But times have changed; there is so much excellent talent now, many of the nobodies can actually saw some real wood; and rediscovering things from outside the mainstream has become fashionable. The two facts put together have meant that recording Zelenka, or CPE, could become one’s ticket to fame.

It should be for Francois Chaplin. This recording is incredible. The music is so incredibly intelligent, polished, measured, wise and beautiful. And it is incredibly moving. And his interpretation is all of these things.

No one who hears it can possibly use the B-word again.

And look at his photos: certainly the pianist looks uncommonly intelligent; but neither too sensitive nor too inward looking. In a room full of handsome, intelligent men he'd be my toughest competitor.