Johann David Heinichen worked at the magnificent court of Dresden from 1717 until his death in 1729, and during the early careers of Bach and Telemann many chroniclers would have named him, not one of them, as Germany's most renowned composer. This 1992 recording gained a great deal of attention when it was released, for at the time his music had not been much recorded. And it does not sound like Bach, like Telemann, or like the Italian models that Heinichen followed in the composition of music in the concerto grosso genre. His orchestra in the music here is large, sounding a bit like that employed by Handel in the Water Music and perhaps intended for outdoor deployment. There are solo passages for horns, oboes, violins, flute, and recorder, and the music's textures have an appealing kaleidoscopic quality that emerges in full color in the historical-instrument rendition of
Musica Antiqua Köln under
Reinhard Goebel. There's also a stolid quality to much of the thematic material, intensified by
Goebel's low-temperature interpretations; the Italianate style benefits from a bit more fire.
Goebel makes a good case for the music in his booklet notes. If we want to understand Dresden, he writes, "that uncommonly peaceable German manifestation of absolutism, we should get to know the concertos of Johann David Heinichen: realistic and straightforward, unusually energetic and sumptuous, sometimes sweet but never weak, and never losing sight, in self-absorption, of their duty to represent the King-Elector to the world." A few minutes with the Water Music will convince one of the need for music to be about something other than duty, but this disc still fills a space on the Baroque shelf and is certainly a must for anyone visiting Dresden's increasingly large collection of restored treasures.