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GRAMOPHONE (02/2016)
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Challenge Classics 
CC72678



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Reviewer: Lindsay Kemp
 

Performers’ interest in the music of Georg Muffat has always centred on his

Armonico tributo of 1682, in which he demonstrated for the benefit of his Austro-German colleagues the new concerto grosso style of Corelli, learnt at first hand during two years spent in Rome. The beautiful ‘Passagaglia’ from Concerto No 5 has become a bit of a concert favourite in its own right. Performances and recordings of his two Florilegium sets (1695 and 1698) are considerably rarer. In these he looked in the other direction and served up exemplars of the French dance-suite style, which, again, he had experienced for himself while studying with Lully in Paris. This in itself may explain their relative neglect, for compared to the engaging trajectories of the concertos, the suites – usually consisting of an ouverture and six or seven dances lasting between three minutes and 30 seconds – are less cohesive. Their Frenchness can hardly be faulted; sarabandes, bourrées, gavottes, gigues and the like, all in five-part string texture, all neatly shaped and sounding eminently danceable, with only a slightly more rooted approach to melody and phrasing (reminiscent of Purcell’s response to French dance music, so no bad thing!) perhaps hinting at non-French origins.

Ensemble Salzburg Barock perform the eight suites of Florilegium primum with style and what has come to seem a typically Austrian forthright and grainy sound that perhaps derives from Harnoncourt and the Vienna Concentus Musicus. The focused studio acoustic probably contributes to that, as well as to clarity of the texture, though it can also be a touch hard on intonation slips and occasional tiny bow squeaks. There is more exciting Austrian Baroque ensemble music than this around but this release serves it well enough.

 

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