The son of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), Carl Philipp Emanuel, described his father’s Sonatas BWV1014–1019 as among the best works his father ever wrote and continued to perform them extensively after his father’s death. This is music of implication and inference, the emotions no less real for their apparent lack of specificity. There is pleasure in the paradox: even without a text, the music sings. “They still sound very good and give me much joy, although they date back more than fifty years. They contain some Adagios that could not be written in a more singable manner today”, writes C.P.E. Bach. In these new recordings, some of the greatest exponents of Baroque music in the Nordic countries, violinist Sirkka-Liisa Kaakinen-Pilch and keyboardist Tuija Hakkila join forces. Tuija Hakkila plays copy of a Gottfried Silbermann fortepiano 1747 by Andrea Restelli – J.S. Bach played one of his fortepianos in 1747 in Potsdam for Frederick the Great and his court musicians.

Sirkka-Liisa Kaakinen-Pilch is an unusually versatile violinist. Though she plays music of every era, the emphasis in her repertoire is on the 17th to 19th centuries. She also plays the viola and viola d’amore and leads the orchestra or conducts from the front desk. After completing her studies at the Sibelius Academy (Yoshiko Arai, Jouko Heikkilä, Kaija Saarikettu) Sirkka-Liisa Kaakinen-Pilch has studied, among others, under Ana Chumachenko and Baroque violin with Monica Hugget and Lucy van Dael. Kaakinen-Pilch has been active in several orchestras and ensembles, including Avanti!, Finnish Baroque Orchestra, Helsinki Baroque Orchestra, Battalia, Orchestra of the 18th Century (Frans Brüggen), La Petite Bande (Sigiswald Kuijken), Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra (Ton Koopman), Concerto Copenhagen (Lars-Ulrik Mortensen). She has also worked for over a decade as leader of the Collegium Vocale (Philippe Herreweghe). Kaakinen-Pilch has been a Professor of chamber music at Stavanger University, and a Professor of early music at the Royal Danish Academy of Music and the Bremen Institute of Arts. Currently Kaakinen-Pilch works as Professor of early music at Cracow Music Academy and teaches violin at the Tampere University of Applied Sciences. She is also a teacher of Baroque violin at the Sibelius Academy, works as an instructor for the European Union Baroque Orchestra and teaches in several masterclasses.

Tuija Hakkila studied at the Sibelius Academy with Liisa Pohjola and Eero Heinonen, and continued her studies at the Paris Conservatoire with Jacques Rouvier and Theodor Paraschivesco. She studied 20th-century music with Claude Helffer in Paris and classical performance practices with Malcolm Bilson in the United States. Other influential teachers have included György Sebök, William Pleeth and Dmitri Bashkirov. She was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University in New York in 1985/86. Since 1987 she holds a senior position in piano music at the Sibelius Academy and earned a Doctor of Music degree in 2005. She also taught at the Royal Danish Conservatory in Copenhagen from 2005 to 2008. In 2014 she was appointed Professor of Piano Music at the Sibelius Academy. Her repertoire ranges from Bach to contemporary music: She has developed her interest in period instrument performance, presenting classical and romantic programmes on period pianos. She works with a number of today’s composers and is invited to give world-premiere performances of new works.