Simone Eckert

Lübeck Virtuosos: Music of Dietrich Buxtehude and His Colleagues - Hamburger Ratsmusik
Buxtehude - G. Schütz - Grecke - Baudinger - Radeck
Classical, Baroque | 1 CD | EAC | FLAC, CUE, LOG | Scans | 357 MB | RS
Recorded: 3-5/1 2005, Schloß Salzau, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Released: 2005 | Label: Thorofon CTH 2474 | TT: 70:59
Hamburger Ratsmusik, Simone Eckert - viola da gamba

Echo Classic Award 2006

The people of Lübeck had a decided preference for music for strings. Important violinists and viola da gamba players worked there even at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and their teaching abilities ensured a continuous supply of successors. Initially influenced by the English music for viols, there developed a string style in Lübeck which combined English polyphony with a new degree of virtuosity. Johann Heinrich Schmelzer's trio sonatas for violin, viola da gamba and basso continuo were in the possession of the Marienkirche, and they caused South-German and Italian ideas to be incorporated as well. The music for strings was additionally influenced by the North-German organists' preference for the stylus phantasticus; often several hundred bars in length, the North-German chorale fantasias feature fascinatingly colourful and often abrupt changes in technique, tone colour, improvisatory quality and virtuosity. (Simone Eckert, CD-booklet)

The name Hitchcock not only stands for the most famous of all British film directors, but for an important family of English instrument makers from England as well. Only a few of these sonorous and extravagant keyboard instruments have survived. The multi-stringed spinet No. 1379 from the Telemann Museum in Hamburg, with its black keys elaborately set in white ivory, can now be heard for the first time in a recording. The Hitchcock Trio invites you to a typical middle-class salon concert as was customary throughout Europe at the end of the 18th century.

Johann Schop - Hamburger Ratsmusicus - Hamburger Ratsmusik
(Erster Theil newer Paduanen, Galliarden […] - 1633)
Classical, Baroque | 1 CD | EAC | FLAC, CUE, LOG | Scans | 307 MB | RS
Recorded: 3-5/1 2006, Schloss Salzau, Schleswig-Holstein | TT: 55:58
Released: 2006 | Label: Thorofon CTH 2464
Hamburger Ratsmusik - Simone Eckert

Johann Schop [c. 1590-1667] was director of town music in Hamburg for much of the period overshadowed by the Thirty Years War (1618-48). After the war, he worked in the city until 1665, and died two years later. He was a virtuoso violinist and it is no surprise that he seems to have been highly regarded by the other town musicians […] Despite this apparent fame in his own time, Schop's music remains almost unknown. […]

[…] the individual lines as played here are admirably clear. The recorded balance between the parts is also excellent. The players perform the music very well indeed, and with a great deal of sensivity […] the commitment and musicianship that Hamburger Ratsmusik bring to their performances […] you cannot fail to be drawn to this music. (Michael Robertson, Early Music, Feb. 2007)