Born in 1660 into a family of peasant farmers, Johann Joseph Fux died in 1741 as Kapellmeister at the Habsburg court in Vienna, a prestigious...

Born in 1660 into a family of peasant farmers, Johann Joseph Fux died in 1741 as Kapellmeister at the Habsburg court in Vienna, a prestigious post that he held for almost 30 years: an extraordinary rise in fortune and testament to both considerable gifts as a musician and, self-evidently, an inclination towards hard work and self-improvement. These new recordings by Filippo Emanuele Ravizzi have few rivals in the current catalogue. Ravizzi is a pupil of Bob van Asperen and Gustav Leonhardt: a distinguished pedigree, which brings a fine feeling both to the tripping, French-style dance rhythms of the partitas and to the potential for darker expressive coloration in the Capriccio and the long D major Chaconne. Anyone curious to hear the work of a formative figure in the Baroque period will take great pleasure from this set.