My personal "Discovery of the Week"
Reinhard Goebel says Meister is a genius. I trust Goebel, for he too is a genius . Surely this is beautiful music but unfortunately too few things did arrive from him till now to be sure he is at the same level of geniality of Corelli or Purcell or Buxtehude. Let's hope the future will give us new discoveries from this forgotten composer.
Anyway this disc is absolutely worth to have in the shelf and to be treasured. It deserves half a dozen (at least) listening sessions. Never boring, a real delight. Try the exhilarating gear change from track 9 to track 10 , just as an example.
I didn't completely like the registered sound, I found it a bit dry. And perhaps microphones were put too close to the string instruments ( and too distant from the harpsichord , as almost always happens : sound engineers evidently hate harpsichords , I don't know why )
The graphic design is definitely pretentious !! Genius doesn't need luxury ...... white and gold, and a shy naked woman who hides her face ( Apart from the girl on the cover this package reminds me of the mythical Beatles' White Album ....but that's another matter)
There is only another Cd with Friedrich Meister's music on the market.
Reinhard Goebel himself did it some years ago for the label Berlin Classic, the same beauty , the same wonder , and a better registered sound , for my taste.
P.S. I would have preferred shorter pauses between the tracks, to better convey a sense of continuity and uniformity in the stream of musical ideas ( I hold still in my mind the beautiful Legrenzi's sonatas performed by Parnassi Musici for CPO .... But for Legrenzi it would be more correct use the word "Fantasie" instead of "Sonate" ..... Fantasias, or Fantazias, don't want pauses in their internal stream )
Warmly recommended, anyway !!!
