L'Arpa Festante - Pez:12 Sonatas Duplex Genius - Import CD

Credits:

L'Arpa Festante

Description:

Here comes a rare recording of a collection of sonatas by Johann Christoph Pätz, who is about 20 years older than Bach. At the age of 24, he became a court musician of the Elector of Bavaria and studied under Arcangelo Corelli in Rome, where he learned the Italian style of music. After returning to Japan, he worked in the chapel orchestras of Bonn and Munich, and from 1706 until his death, as Kapellmeister to Duke Eberhard Ludwig of Württemberg, he devoted himself to raising the level of the orchestra. The "Duplex Genius" included here is estimated to have been composed in the early 1690s after his return from Rome, and was dedicated to the Elector of Bavaria; it was popular when published in Augsburg in 1696, and was also published in London and Amsterdam. Each piece is in the form of a trio sonata for two violins (melody instruments) and basso continuo, and is in the lineage of Corelli's Op. 5. Each sonata consists of four to nine movements, and the contrasts between slow and fast movements and the use of different musical styles give the sonatas a variety of expression.In the title of the first edition of the score, Pétz adds an instrument that is "an arch viola that can be played with equal skill to the viola da gamba or cello," but it is unclear what this refers to, and the cello is used here as the instrument of choice. Naxos Japan