Ludus Instrumentalis

Evgeny Sviridov & Ludus Instrumentalis – Benda: Sonatas & Capriccios (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:05:22 minutes | 693 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © CPO

In the summer of 2010, a Russian violinist by the name of Evgeny Sviridov participated in the Leipzig Bach Competition. And he went home as a winner – much to the surprise of his teacher in St. Petersburg, who knew nothing about it. One year later, the young man’s debut CD featuring works by Johann Sebastian Bach and Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber was released, and critics were speechless, for he played “so refreshingly, full of life and breath, as if he had just written this music himself.” His latest recording for cpo is dedicated to the Bohemian composer and violinist Franz Benda who came from a very modest background to make a career at the court of Frederick II of Prussia. And we realise once again that Sviridov does not like old, dusty ideas. Already after a few bars, the leader of Concerto Köln lets us know that music is indeed an overwhelming narrative of sound, thus saving us from reading many clever books on the subject…

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Ludus Instrumentalis & Evgeny Sviridov – Johann Gottlieb Goldberg: Complete Trio Sonatas (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:09:55 minutes | 808 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ricercar

If there is one student of Johann Sebastian Bach whom posterity has definitely not forgotten, it is Johann Gottlieb Goldberg. However, he owes this destiny to his position as harpsichordist to Count Keyserling: during the latter’s bouts of insomnia, it was Goldberg’s task to play for him the famous variations that he had commissioned from the Leipzig Kantor. This has probably long obscured the fact that Goldberg was also an excellent composer. Aside from his only two surviving cantatas (already recorded by Ricercar), his output is essentially instrumental, and the genre of the trio sonata occupies an appreciable place within it. Here are his complete trio sonatas, along with a sonata in C major at one time attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach (BWV 1037).

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