Sunday 31 July 2011


F.X. Richter | Six Grandes Symphonies Nos.1-6


These half-dozen symphonies were written about 1740, a few years before Franz Xaver Richter began his term of employment in what was then the most prestigious musical establishment in Germany: the court orchestra at Mannheim. They are driven works, characterised by an adventurous sense of harmony and freshness of idea, if also by an obsessive propensity for sequences. But the slow movements have great tenderness, and the overall impression is of an attractive and rather original art. Richter may not exactly be a composer of premier-league status, but he s certainly no idiot. Under Aapo Hakkinen, the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra demonstrates that it is the equal of the finest European period-instrument bands.  -- Sunday Times


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