Antoine Tamestit - Bach: Sonatas For Viola Da Gamba Bwv1027-29 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Throughout 2025, New West Records has been releasing limited edition vinyl reissues of Corb Lund's back catalog as part of the Corb Lund Dark Horses Club. Each installment featured bonus tracks, previously unreleased material, and an exclusive acoustic track available only digitally. Now, as the series reaches it's culmination, New West Records and Corb Lund are releasing Dark Horses on both vinyl and CD.Dark Horses is a collection of songs hand-picked by Corb from across his catalog, presented in chronological order and rerecorded as solo acoustic performances. Stripped down and intimate, these new versions offer a fresh perspective on familiar material - and the result is an illuminating listening experience that showcases the depth and craft of Corb's songwriting.

The music of Arcangelo CORELLI (1653-1713) had an explosive impact on all European musical circles. As both composer and violin virtuoso, CORELLI's reputation and fame was immense. In this regard, there is no lack of important sources bearing witness to a genuine enthusiasm for his music, which was welcomed as a revelation, an illumination, a pure and refined distillation of the traditional language of the Baroque sonata and Italian style. It is not difficult to imagine how the compositions of CORELLI would have circulated all over Europe, being performed, listened to, copied, and also transcribed. Among musicians, there was a veritable legion of composers influenced by CORELLI's models. This phenomenon is one of the reasons for the existence of a transcription for bass viola da gamba and continuo of CORELLI's opus 5, originally composed for violin and continuo. The manuscript used for the present recording contains all 12 sonatas and can be found in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. It is of anonymous authorship, most likely originating in the German-speaking world. The transcription was probably made on the basis of a copy of the original edition for violin printed in Rome in 1700, the only autograph edition.

Any attempt at dating J.S. Bach's three sonatas for viola da gamba and obligato harpsichord (BWV 1027 - 1029) is a very complex issue. According to the most recent research, Bach's gamba sonatas are dated 1736 - 41, and therefore could have been written for Carl Friedrich Abel (1723-1787). Here the Viola da gamba Sonatas are performed by two musicians who have a wide experience and deep knowledge of period instruments and late Baroque performing practice. They focused their attention on the instruments to play. Sergej Istomin chose a viol built by Jacob Stainer in 1655, whose sound is especially brilliant and resonant. Sofronitzky very unusually decided to play these late pieces by Bach on a Silbermann fortepiano copy, built by Paul McNulty. A new instrument at that time, the fortepiano was approved and appreciated by Johann Sebastian Bach during his visit to Gottfried Silbermann in 1747. Paul McNulty's copy of Silbermann's 1749 instrument represents the final stage of the builder's development, seventeen years after the first fortepiano he had built following a description of Christofori's original design. These two instruments' blend of tones and colors conjure up for a unique, singing and invigorating account of well-known works.