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Gottlieb Muffat was Georg Muffat’s son, lesser known today than his father but a formidable musician and composer in his own time, focused particularly on the keyboard. He was born in 1690, and his career overlapped those of Bach and Handel, and anyone new to his music will hear substantial affinities with the music of the latter. This two-disc collection of Muffat’s music, performed with admirable clarity and élan by harpsichordist Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya, concludes with a work that unites all three composers, a Ciacona with 38 variations based on the same chaconne theme used by Bach in his Goldberg Variations and Handel in his sprawling G major Chaconne.
Turn to the Ciacona first, and it’s immediately clear that Muffat was inventive and ambitious. He develops variations of considerable complexity and virtuoso rigour, tied together to create a satisfying over-arching drama. Handel could do this, and Muffat does it in the manner of Handel, but one senses this as a work parallel to Handel, not derivative of him.
Muffat’s Ciacona caps a long suite that opens with a Fantasie, then a fugue, followed by the usual Allemande, Courante and Sarabande, and then galanteries. The opening movements of the suites, sometimes called prelude, ouverture or fantaisie, are substantial, stand-alone works in their own right. In this larger collection of his keyboard music, titled Componimenti musicali per il cembalo, published in a luxury edition in 1739, one senses the standard format of the Baroque suite in evolution, still indebted to French taste but heading in new directions.
Nepomnyashchaya is an ideal advocate for the music, alert, sensitive, imaginative and more than capable of the complex and sometimes fulsome ornamentation. Richard Egarr, her husband, provides a brisk, clear introductory note. |
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