The five-part writing for strings has its period of greatest development in the 16th and 17th centuries, only to fall into a progressive obsolescence. The most commonly used instrumental ensemble included two violins, alto and tenor viola da braccio, cello and basso continuo. Of this quintet, the instrument that undergoes a progressive dismissal is the viola tenore, which in this recording we propose in its original late seventeenth century mounting.

The powerful Catholic Archbishop of Salzburg, renowned for the extraordinary religious ceremonies held at his cathedral, received a splendid festival mass from Muffat. Muffat was a true European: he studied music in Paris with Lully, was an organist in Alsace, and had positions in Vienna, Prague, and Salzburg. He was a man who fused Italian, French and German styles, adding his extravagant verve, especially for this 1690 Pentecost. The music is written for twenty-four different voices and has to be distributed through the space by five choirs, along with impressive effects from the trumpets and percussion. The Royal Chapel allows this “immense” music to be set in space as it deserves. Le Banquet Céleste (Damien Guillon) and La Guilde des Mercenaires (Adrien Mabire) rise to the challenge of performing this work of exceptional proportions!

Freiberg has always been an important cultural location. Already shortly after its foundation in the twelfth century; as the result of important discoveries of silver ore; culture and music were documented and integral parts of urban life. Freiberg was the second Saxon city to have a band of town waits from which various musical groups were later to evolve. The town’s prosperity also made possible the building of large hall churches of which the Cathedral St. Mary numbers even today among the region’s most important cultural monuments.

The release at hand presents musical portraits of two influential composers of the Baroque era through a selection from their oeuvre for violin and harpsichord: Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644 – 1709) and Georg Muffat (1653 – 1704). Their first meeting in Salzburg was unfortunately not documented. However, it is known that both talents arrived with differing previous musical experiences before spending years in the service of the Archdiocese of Salzburg. Thanks to economic growth and financial strength in this sovereign Catholic principality, all the arts, including music, enjoyed considerable support. Like in all other Baroque centers, music was an integral part of courtly representation, and in Salzburg, it also became an important channel of communication for the Counter-Reformation.

A fabulous violinist, Biber preferred his favorite instrument in his compositions and wrote two sonata collections that belong to the basic repertoire of Baroque solo literature: the “Rosenkranz” or “Mystery” sonatas (c. 1674) and the Violin Sonatas (1681). Two pieces from each of these collections can be heard on the album at hand, rounded off with a passacaglia from Georg Muffat’s collection “Apparatus Musico-Organisticus”, which holds as much significance for Baroque keyboard literature as Biber’s collections for the violin mentioned above, and last but not least a unique piece: Muffat’s only surviving violin sonata. The instruments that meet in this recording come from two worlds: Flóra Fábri performs on a harpsichord built in 2015 by Detmar Hungerberg according to Italian models; the violin played by Dóra Szilágyi was built in 1765 by Sebastian Klotz in Mittenwald.

The ever-inquisitive pianist Daniel-Ben Pienaar presents The Long 17th Century: A Cornucopia of Early Keyboard Music. The Long 17th Century refers to the period from the late 1500s to the early 1700s, an era noted for forward-thinking individuality and invention in all areas of life. This two-and-a-half hour recital surveys a pan-European variety of styles, genres and techniques, and comprises 36 works, each by a different composer, many not recorded before on a modern piano. Daniel-Ben Pienaar has been critically acclaimed for his previous albums on Avie: “a gloriously multi-faceted opus maximus ... Amazing and very much worth hearing” –Der Spiegel(on Beethoven’s Complete Piano Sonatas, AV2320) “dizzying virtuosity ... fresh, spontaneous, original readings that shed new light on the keyboard player’s Bible” –BBC Music Magazine (on J. S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, AV2299)



REVIEWS:

Have you noticed the growing trend of pianists taking up 17th-century keyboard works on the modern concert grand? Perhaps it has to do with the desire to be rebellious, or to attain a certain level of intellectual caché. Yet pianists also have valid artistic reasons to explore this repertoire. First and foremost are the sheer musical rewards. Secondly, the freedom one has in regard to phrasing, tempo, and embellishment can be liberating and creatively stimulating. For this remarkable two-disc collection, Daniel-Ben Pienaar has chosen 36 17th-century keyboard works, each by a different composer. He brilliantly reveals how a piano’s dynamic scope, timbral diversity, and sustaining capabilities can vividly and meaningfully serve this repertoire.

One noticeable example is in Tarquino Merula’s Capriccio cromatico, where the ascending legato chromatic lines and detaché counterline with repeated notes take on distinctive characters. The Weckmann D minor Canzon’s virtuosic repeated notes gain color and drama through pianistic inflection, and via Pienaar’s dapper fingerwork, of course. Terraced dynamics and half-tints of pedal evoke trumpets and winds in Gabrieli’s joyous Canzon quarta.

What bracing trills and hair-trigger scale passages Pienaar delivers throughout Muffat’s Partita IV, while serving up a more unified and colorfully contrasted reading of Buxtehude’s large-scale “La Capricciosa” Variations than most period performers manage to do. And while Pienaar allows for pockets of space or “air” between the notes in Keril’s Passacaglia, he manages to shape the sounds and silences into long-lined entities. I encourage listeners to discover their own favorite works and magic moments across this intelligently programmed, splendidly engineered, and boundlessly satisfying release.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10; Jed Distler)

What makes it work is not just the dazzling precision and clarity of Pienaar’s finger technique (though that is certainly a vital factor), but the intelligence that has gone into his interpretations. He also communicates an individual and convincing vision for each piece, enough for every one of them to give delight.

–Gramophone (Editor's Choice; June 2020)

Handel, Scarlatti, Corelli, Stradella, Muffat ... From 1650 to the beginning of the eighteenth century, Rome exercised an immense power in attracting composers from all over Europe and experienced an intense moment of musical activity, because of - or in spite of - the papal administration. It was a prosperous period with a melting pot of influences. The programme devised here by the Roman conductor, Rinaldo Alessandrini, offers a complete and personal vision of the time, passionate and secular, lyrical (made sublime by Sandrine Piau) and orchestral, romantic in every way. Rinaldo Alessandrini is one of the leading figures in the international early music scene. His predilection for the Italian repertory and his constant preoccupation with the expressive characteristics specific to the Italian style of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are the decisive factors that orientate his musical approach and interpretative options, both as the head of Concerto Italiano, of which he is the founder and director, and as a soloist and guest conductor.