Rating: 5/5
Review:
Excellent
This is an excellent double CD of some very fine and engaging harpsichord music, played beautifully by Mitzi Meyerson. Gottlieb Muffat, the son of Georg Muffat, was born in 1690 (making him roughly contemporary with Bach) and he worked chiefly in Vienna for much of the 18th Century until his death in 1770. He was a highly skilled musician and these works are of the highest quality, full of invention melody and expressive writing. Both this collection and Gottlieb Muffat himself were completely new to me and I am very glad that I took a chance on it.
Mitzi Meyerson, continuing her mission to unearth obscure harpsichord music, plays it all beautifully. Her technique is rock-solid, her judgement of ornamentation and rubato is perfect to my ear and she brings out the really delightful nature and variety of this music. The recorded sound is excellent and the harpsichord sounds simply lovely throughout (showing yet again that Beecham's famous remark about skeletons on a tin roof may be funny but is hopelessly wrong).
Glossa have produced their usual lavish and beautiful packaging for this set. The notes are in the form of a transcript of an interview with Mitzi Meyerson which I found rather twee in tone, although much of the content is very interesting and I certainly wouldn't carp about it. This is an all-round cracker of a set - I am extremely glad that I came across it and recommend it very warmly.
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