The instrumental music of composer
Georg Muffat
is fairly well known, at least to Baroque music fans, but that of his son
Gottlieb
is much less so. There are several reasons for this, although
was familiar enough in his own time. One is that he wrote mostly keyboard music, collected in two large sets that are a bit unwieldy for everyday performance. Yet the cumbersomely titled
Componimenti musicali per il cembalo
, covering the entirety of a double album here, seems intended for performance at a stretch; it concludes with a magnificent Ciacona that is the equal of other Baroque essays in that monumental form. The music here also has an odd mix of virtuosity and academicism, with ornaments numbered according to type in the score, but once one gets by these external features, the music is fascinating. There are six French-style dance suites in the usual early 18th century style, but each one has its own specified mood ("pure, simple," "noble, regal, uplifting," "stormy, tragic"), with content packed in to match, and the dance rhythms de-emphasized as they are in
Bach
. Indeed, whether or not
knew
Muffat
's music (he certainly knew
Handel
's),
would have loved these suites, with their mixture of the systematic and the expressive. They receive ideally dense, muscular performances from harpsichordist
Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya
, whose final Ciacona is worth the price of admission, and there is an elegant note from her mentor (and husband)
Richard Egarr
. ~ James Manheim