Johann Heinrich Schmelzer : Sonatas

Album review

This 1991 recording unusually featured a pair of small Italian groups, Labyrinto and Ensemble Aurora, performing together and separately in ensemble sonatas of various sizes by Austrian composer and violinist Johann Heinrich Schmelzer. It's hard to pick out one group from the other, and indeed, the packaging does not indicate to which group each of the eight individual players belongs. The sonatas are all in the typical style of mid-17th-century Italy, with alternating short sections of contrasting tempo and rhythm that may bring to mind the contrast between light and dark in Baroque painting. The consistent, rather tinkly sound of the string group and the sameness of the musical form may make for a long haul for listeners without a particular interest in instrumental music of the period (these sonatas are drawn from sets published in 1659 and 1662); they would never have been performed back to back in sets like this. But the album, which was reissued by Glossa in 2011, can be recommended to fans of Baroque instrumental music. Schmelzer, a generation before Biber, was a less wildly original composer, but the same imaginative treatment of Italian models is audible in these works. Sample the Pastorale sonata a tre (track 5) with its unexpected treatments of its initial 6/8 material for one instance. The harpsichord and organ continuo of keyboardist Guido Morini was notable for its lively, active quality in 1991, and it still sounds good two decades later. The attractive still-life drawing on the cover of the Glossa version is another point in its favor, as is the fact that recordings of Schmelzer remain scarce.
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