Swiss recorder virtuoso
Maurice Steger is one of the most exciting specialists on his instrument to come along since the late and lamented
David Munrow, and he was already becoming an established touring artist in Europe while still a student. Having previously delivered two fine discs of
Telemann and
Giuseppe Sammartini chamber works, Harmonia Mundi's Venezia 1625 finds
Steger as leader and coordinator of a large group of instrumentalists, though not all play at the same time; larger configurations of the ensemble dominate the first half of the program. What ties it all together is the concept, which centers on the early Baroque chamber sonata (or sinfonia) as practiced in Venice around 1625, a time and place that nearly signify the declaration of independence for Western instrumental music. Publications of that era tend to be so vague in terms of instrumentation that nearly any combination is conceivable to realize a given piece, and
Steger takes full advantage of this in making his ensemble choices and taking them apart again, not to mention the observing convention that anything written for violin then could also pass for the recorder. The backdrop supporting
Steger is different literally from track to track, and this helps provide variety, though the latter half of the disc is geared more toward pieces of modest of dimensions.