Editorial Reviews

With the flood of recordings devoted to the freethinking Salzburg Baroque composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, it is not surprising that his predecessor as Salzburg music director, Andreas Hofer, has been resurrected. There is nothing here to rival Biber's outlandish and fascinating programmatic ideas; Hofer's sacred music, as represented on this disc, falls much closer to the Venetian-derived German mainstream inherited from Schütz. That said, this is an ideal purchase for anyone who likes Schütz, Biber, or the south German Baroque in general. The album reproduces a hypothetical Vespers service of the area, featuring the music Hofer, as kapellmeister, might have drawn together for a festive event -- mostly his own, but also including works by Biber, Giovanni Valentini, and Johann Baptist Dolar. The last two of these are even less familiar than Hofer, and the pieces included offer valuable insights into where Biber's innovative streak came from. Hear the two "Canzone à tre" by Valentini, especially the "Canzon à tre in G major" (track 10), with its obsessive experimentation with the circle of fifths. The program includes several psalm settings, two motets, and an attractive "Magnificat" by Hofer, whose music, despite the splendor of its models, breaks up the large polychoral texture into a variety of solo combinations. Bell'arte Salzburg under director Annegret Siedel is a state-of-the-art historical-instrument ensemble, with a warm string tone and especially flexible continuo realizations by organist Margit Schultheiss and theorbist Thomas Boysen, but the female soloists do not have the imposing sound the music requires. The booklet sketches out Hofer's world in a good deal of detail, and the Super Audio sound is superb -- but curiously the buyer does not learn where the obviously carefully selected sound environment is located. Latin texts are translated into German only, but all are familiar materials for church music and are readily available in English versions on the Internet. James Manheim, All Music Guide

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