Biber, Schmelzer, Walther: Scherzi Musicali - MAK, Goebel

Biber, Schmelzer, Walther
Scherzi Musicali
Musica Antiqua Köln, Reinhard Goebel
Archiv 429 230-2

Reinhard Goebel has put together an imaginative sequence of pieces by Biber, Schmelzer and Walther - all, to a greater or lesser extent, containing a programmatic element. It is repertory which unfailingly brings out much that is most admirable in the performance style of Cologne Musica Antigua. Foremost among the ensemble's strengths are rhythmic clarity, a communicative feeling for colourful gesture and a well-developed sense of fantasy. Sometimes these last two qualities may have struck listeners as being not entirely appropriate to mainstream musical repertory of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; but here these, and many other engaging features, combine happily with pieces which are fanciful, depletive and at times eccentric. Goebel finds a rich vein of humour running through this distinctive south German mid-baroque idiom and at times it would be hard to take issue with him.

The least unfamiliar works on the disc are Biber's Sonata Die Bauern-Kirchfartt genandt, his ten-part Battalia and the charming serenade, Night watchman's Call. Schmelzer's Fechtschule ("Fencing School") was new to me as were the two Sonatas in D major and G major attributed to Biber. These attributions are engaging but did not hold my attention to the same extent as the other pieces here. Two pieces only are solo sonatas, Biber's La PastoreIla and Johann Jakob Walther's Imitatione del Cuccu—he alone hailed from central Germany rather than from the Austrian south.

Goebel and his impeccably drilled band play all this music with esprit and stylistic assurance, savouring the frequency startling harmonies and the resulting sonorities. Perhaps I prefer by a bow hair's breadth Nikolaus Harnoncourt's 1965 Archiv and 1971 Teldec recordings of the Battalia (nla), but Goebel's Nightwatchman's Call has more character, more variety of affect and more warmth than any performance previously known to me. I hardly need say that Goebel's own solo violin playing is of a high order, detailed, incisive, passionate and deadly accurate. I was especially beguiled by Biber's La Pastorella.

In short, hardly an item here fails to charm the sense both on account of the composer's fertile invention and the fresh approach of the musicians themselves. Fine recorded sound and an entertaining if at times fanciful note.

N.A., Gramophone Magazine