Philipp Heinrich Erlebach: VI Sonate a due Violini col suo Basso Continuo (1694)

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Editor's info:
The VI Sonate a due Violini col suo Basso Continuo published in Nuremberg in 1694 by Philipp Heinrich Erlebach (1657-1714) are an undoubted pinnacle of German mid-Baroque violin literature, pointing to the quality this maestro’s extensive catalogue must have amassed and which was unhappily lost in the 1735 fire in the Heidecksburg Castle library, a corpus comprising some thousand works including operas, oratorios, sacred and secular cantatas, various religious works, ballets and other instrumental works then appreciated and admired by most of the German courts. However, the sonatas recorded here were fortunately saved from the fire. Beautifully made, they represent the confluence of styles and influences, mainly Italian, French and German, characteristic of a substantial part of the German music of the time. Of particular note are the Terza, Quarta and Sesta sonatas, written using the technique of “scordar” or “scordatura” which, according to Teresa Casanova, violinist of El Arte Mvsico, “adjusts the usual tuning of the instrument’s strings to the tonality in which a composition is written”. The sonorous effects are surely astonishing, as are the results achieved by this young scholarly Spanish ensemble throughout the recording, a brilliance enhancing the excellent impression registered by critics and public on the occasion of their earlier disc dedicated to the music of Antonio Caldara.