Babyschlaf Dotzauer

In his day, Friedrich Dotzauer (1783-1860) was extremely influential as a performer, teacher and composer. In addition to having a highly successful career as an orchestral player. Dotzauer taught many of the best-known cellists of his age, and was prolific as a composer of sacred music, symphonies and chamber music. This issue makes available a sample of Dotzauer's chamber music which reveals the composer's craftsmanship and rich imagination. The four-movement Quintet. Op. 134 has an easy grace and carefree melodiousness that Bylsma and his colleagues express most engagingly.

The main theme of this work of the Ensemble Chiaroscuro follows closely that of the first disc (also produced by Concerto Classics, “Baroque Enchantment”): the proposal is to collect a series of pieces to form a sort of concert program, in order to tell a true story in music, hence the title “Cello Tales”. The listener will in fact be led, through the notes of Antonio Fantinuoli cello, in a journey of rediscovery of the great masters and pioneers of the leading instrument of this recording, unearthed by a careful research of ancient manuscripts done by the same artist.