Music continues to surface from the various minor noble courts of Europe in the 18th century, and a lot of it, through the skill of the composers or simply from the distinctive purposes for which it was composed, is proving interesting. Giovanni Benedetto Platti, born in or near Padua around 1697, used his marketability as an Italian on top of the latest trends to get a job with the Schönborn family in the German city of Würzburg. One of his patrons there was a middling cellist, and the music recorded here sprang from the ...
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Music continues to surface from the various minor noble courts of Europe in the 18th century, and a lot of it, through the skill of the composers or simply from the distinctive purposes for which it was composed, is proving interesting. Giovanni Benedetto Platti, born in or near Padua around 1697, used his marketability as an Italian on top of the latest trends to get a job with the Schönborn family in the German city of Würzburg. One of his patrons there was a middling cellist, and the music recorded here sprang from the requirements involved with that. Especially unusual are the four pieces entitled ricercata, which are duets putting equal emphasis on cello and violin. The vaguely old-fashioned title suggests the contrapuntal nature of the music, but these duets are anything but academic. They're brisk pieces that break up the figuration with all kinds of Vivaldian tricks, and they have deeply expressive slow movements, nicely rendered by cellist Felix Koch (violinist Barbara Mauch-Heinke has just a...
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