The Partiturbuch Ludwig takes its name from its compiler,
Jacob Ludwig, a court musician active in Gotha in the mid-years
of the seventeenth century. In 1662 he presented his folio of
contemporary instrumental compositions to Duke August, a former
employer of his from Ludwig’s time in Wolfenbüttel. There are
about one hundred works, mainly though not exclusively cast in
sonata form, and all written in Germany though not necessarily
by Germans. This disc casts a shrewd eye over the whole corpus
of this folio and has selected a representative and really rather
impressive selection to reflect its breadth and range.
One of the most
obvious highlights is the work of Antonio Bertali, who contributed
the most music (eighteen pieces) to the folio. He was the Kapellmeister
in Vienna and was a significant figure, composing music for
successive Emperors and achieving a position of pan-European
eminence. Born in Verona he was originally a violinist and this
accounts for his mastery of composition for the instrument.
The Ciaconna in C major is a ceaselessly imaginative
work, full of probing musicianship and dextrously laid out.
The Sonata a 3 taps into the nobility of utterance of
which he was so adroit an exponent – though it also shows another
side to him, with the perky bassoon line adding spice and wit,
and the mobility of the writing adding colour and dynamic contrast.
Schmelzer’s Sonata
variata is lyrical, elegant and is warmly played here, with
charming dynamism of expression and very touching diminuendi.
Capricornus directed church music in Pressburg (now Bratislava)
but his gifts were by no means confined to the vocal. He writes
a Ciaconna of considerable standing and the performers
here do well to explore his supportive theorbo and harpsichord
writing - it’s very rewarding. We finish with yet another Ciaconna,
a form at which these Italian and German composers excelled,
and that’s the one by Nathanael Schnittelbach. Resident in the
Hanseatic city of Lübeck, Schnittelbach arrived via Gdansk in
1655 and carved out a successful career in his newly adopted
city. It’s all the more disappointing then to find that this
is his only surviving solo violin work especially as it’s so
assured and impressive a piece. One has to remember that these
composers were writing many years before the Italian virtuoso
school took hold; if one thinks of Tartini here or Sammartini
one is very much a-historical, though the powerful rhetoric
that such as Schnittelbach evokes is certainly a strong indicator
of native German solo violin strength in the two generations
before the birth of J.S. Bach.
A number of new
Naxos discs seem to be derived from German radio studios of
late. This one was recorded – for broadcast? – in 2002. It’s
excellently engineered and played, as I’ve suggested, with flair,
imagination and no little virtuosity by the Ensemble Echo du
Danube.
Jonathan Woolf
see also Review
by Glyn Pursglove
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