Musica da camera: Masterpieces played by Masters

Album review

Masterpieces Played by Masters asserts the back cover of this reissue confidently. That gives the wrong idea of the flavor of this little disc of chamber music from the middle eighteenth century, originally recorded in 1978. The instruments are all either of the relevant period or copies of such, making this one of the earlier applications of historical-performance principles to pre-Classical music. The "Masters" part of the equation is justifiable enough; flutist Barthold Kuijken and the other players involved all had long careers in the Dutch heartland of the historical-performance movement, and, unlike so many other players trained primarily in the Baroque repertory, they take naturally to the light charm of the pieces played here. Indeed, "masterpieces" is a word with a Germanic stomp that isn't quite right for this music. The virtue of the program is not that it collects unusually profound examples of anything, but that it captures a period of rapid musical change, and in the process exposes some music that remains little known. All the pieces are for similar ensembles involving flute, violin, oboe, cello, and continuo (or, by the time of Johann Christian Bach, simply a harpsichord); one or more of those pieces may be missing, but the medium remains constant enough that the listener can absorb variations in the purely stylistic flavors. The program is chronological, running from the late Baroque pieces by Telemann and Handel up to the Quintet in D major for flute, oboie, violin, cello, and harpsichord of Johann Christian Bach, from around 1770. It's easy to imagine the program as an evening musicale at a North German collegium musicum or musical society of the sort described in the notes, with players in the century's third quarter surveying the last several decades. The trend is from incipient simplicity to the sunny, melodic style of Bach that exerted such an influence on Mozart, and the works aren't so much masterpieces as good examples of the sensuous spirit that pervaded all the arts of the period. Along the way are some rarer composers: Galuppi (who remains understudied even though he was one of the few composers of the period known to the Romantics) and the still more obscure Johann Gottlieb Janitsch, an associate of C.P.E. Bach's at the court of Frederick the Great of Prussia. This is an effective detour into the Berlin style, with its characteristically spiky melodic idiom that plays nicely off the tradition of vocalistic melody taking shape in the other pieces. Pleasant to listen to, and nicely recorded for 1978, this remains a fine historical-survey program for lovers of music from the middle eighteenth century.
© TiVo

Details of the original recording : 56:33 - DDD - Enregistré en 1978 - Notes en français, anglais et allemand