These "musical fruits of spring" are North German sonatas (and one keyboard chaconne) for small ensemble, from the generation before Dietrich Buxtehude, with a few pieces by that North German master included. The other composers involved -- Kaspar Förster, Dietrich Becker, Nicolaus Adam Strungk, Johann Adam Reincken, and others -- are known mostly as names looming in Bach's prehistory, and there has been a need for the state-of-the-art historical-instrument performance here of the sort delivered by Cologne's CordArte ...
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These "musical fruits of spring" are North German sonatas (and one keyboard chaconne) for small ensemble, from the generation before Dietrich Buxtehude, with a few pieces by that North German master included. The other composers involved -- Kaspar Förster, Dietrich Becker, Nicolaus Adam Strungk, Johann Adam Reincken, and others -- are known mostly as names looming in Bach's prehistory, and there has been a need for the state-of-the-art historical-instrument performance here of the sort delivered by Cologne's CordArte ensemble. This is an exciting group of young German players, offering rhythmically supple continuo playing from harpsichordist Markus Märkl and chitarronist Andreas Arend, along with rich Baroque strings. It's a vigorous sound altogether, and the only problem is that despite the later designation of this rather freeform music as examples of the stylus phantasticus by theorists, it doesn't have a strong degree of fantasy to today's ears. The forces for many of the sonatas, namely two...
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