Veteran Dutch historical-performance specialist Ton Koopman has set himself the task in his seventh decade of recording the complete compositional output of Dietrich Buxtehude. He was, in fact, elected president of the International Dietrich Buxtehude Society. Some of these recordings have been of keyboard works, but Koopman, here and elsewhere, has also led small-ensemble works from the keyboard, covering an almost completely unknown repertoire. Here he offers a set of eight unpublished sonatas for from one to three ...
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Veteran Dutch historical-performance specialist Ton Koopman has set himself the task in his seventh decade of recording the complete compositional output of Dietrich Buxtehude. He was, in fact, elected president of the International Dietrich Buxtehude Society. Some of these recordings have been of keyboard works, but Koopman, here and elsewhere, has also led small-ensemble works from the keyboard, covering an almost completely unknown repertoire. Here he offers a set of eight unpublished sonatas for from one to three stringed instruments -- not only violin and viola da gamba, but also the older violone -- and basso continuo. The music is presented in a rather dry way in the booklet (in English, German, and French), but it's quite lovely, with a kind of quiet introspection that often appears in Buxtehude's music and clearly sets it apart from Bach, even though the older composer's influence is manifest in that of Bach's early years. The sonatas appeared in the 1690s, just before the clearly structured...
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