Georg Christoph Wagenseil was born in 1715 which puts him nearly halfway between J.S. Bach and Mozart but contemporary with Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach.
Although a prolific composer in his time, there's not very much to be easily found on disc but I'm very glad I was inquisitive enough to get myself this recent release.
String quartets without violins are like an equivalent of a football team without strikers but nonetheless are a surprisingly sophisticated and satisfactory way of going about things.
If the original scoring for three cellos and bass has been interpreted in half of these sonatas with two violas, Roberto Sensi makes his case for doing so both in the notes and in the performance.
Wagenseil is slightly closer to the senior Bach in age but his music is closer to Mozart's. If the layers of the first subject in Sonata IV could be recognizably baroque chamber music, for the most part we are bridging the gap to classical music, a period apparently so dominated by Mozart and Haydn that other composers of the period are overshadowed. But that obviously isn't because there were no others worthy of note. Several parts of this double-CD set have enough instant appeal to be used as theme tunes for period dramas and any number of BBC programmes about antiques.
Mozart, it is reported anecdotally, was familiar with Wagenseil's music as a child and he might have learned much about arranging a jaunty tune or a line of decorous melancholy from these very pieces.
While the main line is carried by the violas and cellos, the star is quite possibly the bass part that shudders, reverberates or winds along subcutaneously to great effect.
This set hasn't been off my CD player yet and might not be until the next couple of bargains I have found arrive which are concertos from harp and trombone, separately rather than together you understand, and Wagenseil is a happy addition to my growing collection of lesser known composers.
