"Yet another a record of baroque violin works played by baroque instrumentalists on period baroque instruments", you might well say upon reading the track list of this release by (baroque...) violinist Jonas Zschenderlein, accompanied by harpsichord player Alexander von Heißen. In fact, it's anything but! The idea of this album is to record the instruments in a completely modern way, with microphones placed up close, and a post-production operation (mixing, balancing tracks between microphones, equalisation or distortion of the original sound, artificial reverberation, etc.) of the sort normally found on rock albums. The result is a sound which is bound to startle a listener who is used to their Bach Sonata BWV 1019 being played a certain way, according to the canonical method imposed by post-romantic violinists in recent decades, or by "pure" baroque artists. But that's the whole point. Corelli himself gets the same treatment and his reasonably famous Sonata Op. 5 No. 5 becomes pretty much unrecognisable. On the other hand, lesser-known works by Montanari and Westhoff, thanks to the treatment they get here, could well become standards… © SM/Qobuz