<<  -- 2 --  Malcolm Tattersall    GERMAN BAROQUE

Katharina Arfken, baroque oboe, leads the ensemble. She is beautifully matched by Ann-Kathrin Brueggeman on second oboe and balanced by Donna Agrell, baroque bassoon. The reed players are in turn supported by Karl-Ernst Schroeder, lute, Joerg-Andreas Boetticher, harpsichord, and David Sinclair, swapping between his historical string instruments. The list of musicians and groups they have individually worked with reads like Who's Who in Early Music, and together they are an extremely talented and well-balanced ensemble with an excellent feeling for German baroque style. As one expects from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, period instruments, or copies, are used throughout.

My first response to this disc was delight: 'what a gorgeous sound and what wonderful playing!' [listen -- track 4, 0:01-0:54]. My second was '... but it's a bit too much of the one good thing, like too much port at one sitting.'

Further listening modified the second reaction but not the first. Yes, it would have been nice to have a different sound for a track or two (I'm sure Fasch wrote a bassoon sonata, and I would love to hear the bassoonist given centre stage for longer than a few seconds) but the sonatas we are given do reveal considerable individuality on closer acquaintance.

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