Compositions for Viola da Gamba.

Gottfried Finger 

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Compositions for Viola da Gamba 

Petr Wagner--viola da gamba, Ensemble Tourbillon. Production: Vitezslav Janda. Text: Czech, Eng. Recorded: 1/2005, Waldorf School, Pribram. Published: 2005. TT: 54:04. DDD. 1 CD Arta F10137 (distribution 2HP Production).

The recording of a hitherto never recorded piece by a a well-known composer is not such a rare event and so it is not unusual to find the catchy slogan "world premiere recording" on the back of a CD. But this CD is something different. It is not just a newly discovered piece of music that has its world premiere here, but a newly discovered composer and his whole oeuvre. This musical portrait of the Moravian composer Gottfried Finger is no small event for admirers of early music and above all for lovers of the viola da gamba. Finger, a native of Olomouc, first served for a short time in the Archbishop's Capella of Archbishop Lichtenstein-Castelcorn, but he soon found Central Europe too small for ambitions that he pursued, immediately finding favour and a place in the London Chapel Royal. In England he composed a great deal of stage music including what was evidently the largest and most costly opera performance of its time, the Virgin Prophetess. Finger later left England and went to Vienna, although he did not stay there for long. His production of Eccles' opera The Last Judgment in Vienna went down in musical history as the first performance of an English opera in continental Europe. Apart from holding posts in the service of the Prussian Queen Sophie in Berlin and as Kammermusiker and later Konzertmeister to Duke Charles Phillip of Neuberg, he travelled all around Europe. In his last years he settled in Mannheim, where he was one of several who laid the foundations of the "Mannheim School".

It would be unrealistic to expect a breakthrough in music history nd nobody could claim that Finger was a major peak in European culture. His output ranges from very original musical ideas to the borders of triviality. Yet it cannot be denied that he was an important phenomenon of his time.

The initiators of the project Petr Wagner and musicologist Robert Rawson, who actively shares in the recording as the second gamba player, together with other members of the Ensemble Tourbillon, have taken great pains with the recording. The CD has been very creatively conceived as far as the sound colour of the instrumentation is concerned, and works with the specific features of the sonata da chiesa and sonata da camera, variations, suite and with contrast between ensemble and solo passages. In the first sonata we already appreciate the imaginative approach to sound colour: the gamba is accompanied by an organ positive, a second gamba, archlute and theorba, which gives place in the course of play to the Baroque guitar. The entire set develops in similar permutations of the continuo. Each piece is differently instrumented, and this gives the recording its own highly individual character. The vibrant performance reflects not just the evident pleasure that the players take in the music but their clear musical concept of the work and feeling for lightness and wit. The listener may congratulate himself that he is filling up a gap in musical history with this CD, but first and foremost he won't be bored listening to it.