Fasch: Trios & Sonatas

Epoca Barocca

CPO 777204

After its successful recordings of compositions by Heinichen (cpo 777 115-2) and Schaffrath (cpo 777 116-2), Epoca Barocca now turns to Johann Friedrich Fasch on this recording spotlighting his musique de chambre quality.In 1735 the Darmstadt court ensemble welcomed a new member in the person of the virtuoso bassoonist Christian Klotsch. In his baggage he brought with him copies of sonatas penned by the Zerbst music director Johann Friedrich Fasch, some of which have been recorded for this CD. At all courts the trio sonatas and quartets of the Zerbst court music director were valued like those of hardly any other composer of the times. During his Leipzig school years Fasch had received what turned out to be decisive inspiration from a highly motivating university student there by the name of Georg Philipp Telemann. The proximity to Telemann's chamber music everywhere apparent in the works recorded here has a simple explanation: Fasch, as he himself admitted, modeled his composing on Telemann's works while in Leipzig and later as well. Fasch wrote his admired chamber music for all sorts of different instrumental combinations — for the violin and gamba, the traditional instruments of baroque court virtuosos, and even then for the oboe and bassoon, two instruments that had just begun to establish themselves throughout Europe. And it is precisely these latter two instruments that play an outstanding role in Fasch's trios and quadros. The music theoretician Johann Adolph Scheibe termed Fasch's quartets featuring oboes and bassoons the ideal model of the genre. Epoca Barocca again spreads out a baroque sound canvas radiating with the tone colors employed by Fasch in many nuanced shadings.

CD

19.02.2007

761203720422