The booklet to this release by the French Baroque group Les Accents and leader Thibault Noally overstates a bit the obscurity of the Bach contemporaries included on this release. Heinichen, Graun, Fasch, and certainly Telemann, have all seen renewed interest, although it may be that they are less familiar in France (though Christoph Förster is a truly obscure, and indeed welcome, discovery). Nevertheless, Noally & Co. do break some new ground here, and the energetically performed program is both informative and a lot of fun ...
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The booklet to this release by the French Baroque group Les Accents and leader Thibault Noally overstates a bit the obscurity of the Bach contemporaries included on this release. Heinichen, Graun, Fasch, and certainly Telemann, have all seen renewed interest, although it may be that they are less familiar in France (though Christoph Förster is a truly obscure, and indeed welcome, discovery). Nevertheless, Noally & Co. do break some new ground here, and the energetically performed program is both informative and a lot of fun. The premise is original: Bach's conservatism as a composer was overstated. He mastered the Vivaldian model quickly, produced superb examples, and inspired others to try to match his combination of brilliant melody, arpeggiated figuration, and rigorous hidden counterpoint. Most of these composers took him up on it, even Johann Gottlieb Graun, who was a generation younger, although his Concerto for violin, recorder, and orchestra is of a lighter, more galant sort. Sample the punchy...
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