Minasi Bach

Moving from the style galant to the Age of Revolutions, this album is an invitation to discover half a century of the cello concerto’s history. A few years after a sensational first volume devoted to C. P. E. Bach, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Riccardo Minasi and Ensemble Resonanz pay tribute to the hypersensitivity of the cello and honour with panache the transcendental virtuosity of the unjustly overlooked Antonín Kraft!

Moving from the style galant to the Age of Revolutions, this album is an invitation to discover half a century of the cello concerto’s history. A few years after a sensational first volume devoted to C. P. E. Bach, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Riccardo Minasi and Ensemble Resonanz pay tribute to the hypersensitivity of the cello and honour with panache the transcendental virtuosity of the unjustly overlooked Antonín Kraft!

In this programme entitled Variations on Variations, Rinaldo Alessandrini, one of the today’s references on Baroque music, has chosen to adapt the Goldberg Variations and the Aria variata alla maniera italiana - initially composed for the keyboard - for small string ensemble, from duo to quartet.

There can’t be many ensembles around as stylistically fleet-footed as Hamburg’s Ensemble Resonanz. I’m still thinking fondly back to their Haas, Bartók and Berg programme on the Elbphilharmonie’s opening weekend; and now here they are playing historically informed CPE Bach with equal musical sensitivity and intellectual panache, joined by their artist-in-residence Riccardo Minasi (himself a period-performance chameleon) and their other regular collaborator, Jean-Guihen Queyras.

More than just a challenge to orthodoxy.. . Why should music ‘before Mozart’ now be the sole preserve of period-instrument orchestras? For some years now, Ensemble Resonanz has challenged this idea, without ever neglecting the notion of the sheer pleasure to be derived from the concertos and symphonies of the great C. P. E. Bach. Like their guest soloist Jean-Guihen Queyras, all the musicians master both styles of playing (on metal or gut strings) with dazzling virtuosity. This is the first disc on harmonia mundi to celebrate their collaboration with maestro Riccardo Minasi.

Here is something unusual among the growing number of recordings of Heinrich von Biber's Rosary Sonatas; in Arts two-disc SACD set featuring violinist Riccardo Minasi and Bizzarrie Armoniche, Biber's set of 15 Sonatas realized with a full, Italian style continuo and Italian violin ornamentation. The accepted standard, for decades, was continuo realization with organ alone, and eventually the notion of a cello or theorbo joining the band gained acceptance.