Home | Reviews | Articles | Festivals | Competitions | Other | Contact Us
Google
WWW MUSICALPOINTERS

Buxtehude Six Trio Sonatas

L'Estravagante Stefano Montanari, Rodney Prada, Maurizio Salerno

ARTS SACD: 47731-8
[Recorded 11.06/01.07 TT: 60.30]

A delightful disc and an auspicious conclusion to the Buxtehude year.

Not previously known to me, this music is as fresh and inventive as you could wish. Buxtehude published his Op. 1 sonatas at his own expense, a rarity at the time, and these (together with the Op. 2 collection, to be released by ARTS in due course) are practically the only music to have been published in the composer's own lifetime.

They are wonderfully various and imaginative. A good example is the fourth sonata, which brings the gambist Rodney Prada onto equal terms with the superb baroque violinist Stefano Montanari. The opening chaconne has a fourteen notes theme in 3 and a half bars, adding "a sense of irregularity to its macro-rhythmic procedure".

Gianluca Capuano's comprehensive notes are of great interest in exploring technicalities, besides setting the historical background of the Hamburg musical scene, a city which Buxtehude visited from Lubeck repeatedly.

They are printed in four languages but in very small type; the booklet is available on request from ARTS as .pdf, in which format they can be zoomed to whatever size you choose.

The discs can be purchased on the Web, or the music downloaded: http://www.artsmusic.de/templates/tyContent.php?topic=homepage.

Definitely one of my very top baroque CDs of the year!

Peter Grahame Woolf

P.S. If you can't wait for Op. 2 (to be released by ARTS probably during next year) you might be interested in the original release of Opp. 1 & 2 together as a double CD?

Nice presentation and with large type, but in Italian only... PGW

 


Amadeus 208-2 [mailto:salernomusica@hotmail.com]

Previous recordings (Gramofile)

Huggett et al 'This recording will surely spark off a Buxtehude revival.'
Kraemer et al 'The stand­out track has to be the delicious and playful ‘ciaccona’ which opens No 4 - - Good mid­Baroque listening.'