Potential buyers of this disc should be apprised that they're getting recorder music, not flute music, for some might mistake the "flauto" mentioned on the cover to mean a transverse flute. Save that, there's little to fault in this disc of music by Giuseppe Sammartini, an oboist and composer who was the brother of the more famous Giovanni Battista Sammartini. The music is undated but likely comes from the 1730s, when the recorder and the transverse flute were both in use; recorder makers responded to the competition with ...
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Potential buyers of this disc should be apprised that they're getting recorder music, not flute music, for some might mistake the "flauto" mentioned on the cover to mean a transverse flute. Save that, there's little to fault in this disc of music by Giuseppe Sammartini, an oboist and composer who was the brother of the more famous Giovanni Battista Sammartini. The music is undated but likely comes from the 1730s, when the recorder and the transverse flute were both in use; recorder makers responded to the competition with extended-range instruments like the English "Fourth Flute" used here in the Sonata in G minor, Op. 13/5 (tracks 13-15). With those and some serious woodshedding, recorder players could keep up with the newly virtuosic flute music -- and, as this disc shows, produce some exciting playing in so doing. This release as a whole testifies to the success Baroque- and Classical-era historical-performance specialists have had in bringing their music to the general classical-buying public, at...
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