Not too long ago, musicologists treated the seventeenth century as a period where instrumental music barely existed, as though there wasn't anything really noteworthy in terms of instrumental music before Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi apart from early English keyboard music. The revival of interest in Heinrich von Biber beginning in the 1960s brought about a revolution in that regard, and by the opening of the twenty first century the names of figures such as Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, Giovanni Felice Sances, and Johann Kasper ...
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Not too long ago, musicologists treated the seventeenth century as a period where instrumental music barely existed, as though there wasn't anything really noteworthy in terms of instrumental music before Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi apart from early English keyboard music. The revival of interest in Heinrich von Biber beginning in the 1960s brought about a revolution in that regard, and by the opening of the twenty first century the names of figures such as Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, Giovanni Felice Sances, and Johann Kasper Kerll are reasonably familiar ones to those who follow music of the early Baroque. Considerably less well known is that of Antonio Bertali, a musician in the Viennese royal chapel from the 1620s and, from 1649 until his death in 1669, served as kapellmeister in the Viennese court. In Arcana's Antonio Bertali: Prothima Suavissima Parte Seconda, Gunar Letzbor leads the Ars Antiqua Austria -- a group that has notably distinguished itself through recordings such as the superb Challenge...
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