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Reviewer:
Fabrice Fitch
If Michael Praetorius’s
music has been widely anthologised, the same is not true of his close
contemporary, Erasmus Widmann, who outlived Praetorius by a dozen years. His
Musicalischer Tugendtspiegel appeared in 1613, just one year after
Praetorius’s Terpsichore musarum, the two publications making up the
totality of this recital. In this case, the greater share of the programme goes
to the lesser-known composer. Widmann’s charming habit of affixing female names
to his dance pieces (Helena, Foelicitas, Magdalena, Sybilla, Regina and so on)
prefigures the occasional practice of later periods. In fact, the majority of
the pieces recorded here are dance music, something that is still relatively
rare on recordings of this period. If this is undemanding music – one dance
begins to sound much like another, especially in Widmann’s case, it must be said
– the variegated approach to scoring keeps the listener guessing. But that
variety flatters to deceive: the frequent chopping and changing (sometimes
within the same section of a given dance) betokens a degree of micromanagement
by the ensemble director. This seems out of place in such obviously functional
music, which was surely intended to be performed with minimal preparation (if
any). The selections from Terpsichore have more substance about them but the
suggestion of colours pasted on (albeit lovely ones) makes an otherwise pleasant
recital seem curiously old-fashioned.
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