Hanna Salzenstein

J.S. Bach’s son Johann Christian arrived in London in 1762, and with his fellow composer Carl Friedrich Abel established a series of prestigious concerts that ran for 17 years. Music heard at the Bach-Abel recitals is surveyed on this intriguing album by the Swiss ensemble Les Ombres. The sprightly Quartet in D Major by J.C. Bach, two pensive pieces for bass viol by Abel, and a charmingly Mozartian Harpsichord Quintet by Johann Samuel Schröter are among the highlights, and three of Haydn’s numerous arrangements of Scottish songs are brightly sung by mezzo-soprano Fiona McGown. Les Ombres play on period instruments, imparting an extra tang to this fascinating slice of aural history.

Specchio veneziano or the Venetian mirror – this programme compares and contrasts two composers from the city of the Doges: on the one hand the celebrated Vivaldi, on the other a virtual unknown, Giovanni Battista Reali, who was born there in 1681, three years after Vivaldi, and died in 1751, ten years after his illustrious colleague. A violinist himself, he composed trio sonatas, including a very spectacular Folia, which Théotime Langlois de Swarte, Sophie de Bardonnèche, Hanna Salzenstein and Justin Taylor juxtapose with Vivaldi’s Folia, alongside other highly virtuosic pieces, many of them complete rediscoveries, since half of this program has never been recorded before.