The path traced on this album, with music by Georg Christoph Wagenseil (1715-1777), and on following ones has the undoubted merit of introducing us to...

The path traced on this album, with music by Georg Christoph Wagenseil (1715-1777), and on following ones has the undoubted merit of introducing us to some composers considered “minor” compared to Haydn and Mozart. They were not only very active and influential on the musical life of that time; they also created a considerable amount of quality music, which deserves to be rediscovered and appreciated. In a historical-musical perspective, the music of these less famous authors helps to reconstruct the passage between the decline of the Baroque, towards the middle of the eighteenth century, and the noon of the classical style. A period that we often classify as ‘pre-classical’ or ‘galant’ or ‘early Viennese school’. This praiseworthy cultural operation, aimed at rediscovering not only “minor” composers but also certain genres considered “domestic” music allows us to better understand how the “musical landscape” looked like, especially in Vienna.

Domestic music responded to the desire for cultured entertainment not only for the aristocracy but also for the rising bourgeois class; and as such, it constituted an indubitable status symbol. The six sonatas in trio on this album, dating from around the 1750s can be ascribed to the genre of ‘divertimento’: before 1780 the term was all-encompassing, and included all non-orchestral instrumental music, including sonatas and quartets. Above all, the idea of “musical conversation”, or dialogue or discourse between the different instruments, is very present in this type of composition, in which a pleasant and well-regulated lounge conversation is simulated and sublimated with just the notes. The collection of Six Sonatas, presented on this CD, from the early fifties of the eighteenth century should be placed among the first chamber documents for three independent strings, without the support of a keyboard instrument for the realization of the continuo.