The Coviello Classics Hybrid Multichannel CD release Cabinetmusik for Carl Theodor (1724-1799) will prove truly mysterious to even the most expert listeners at first glance. Perhaps "Carl Theodor Dreyer" is the intended dedicatee. No -- look at the years. Perhaps the vintage oil landscape or the list of composers in tiny print that rides precipitously along an artificial dividing line in the lower mid cover might give it away; nonetheless, it took some researching to figure out. "Carl Theodor" signifies Prince-Elector Carl Theodor of Mannheim, and this is a collection of chamber music by the so-called "Mannheim School," a group of composers connected to the Mannheim court orchestra. From 1740, when Johann Stamitz assumed leadership of the Mannheim orchestra, to 1777, when the Prince himself was forced to move to Munich and had to break up the band, the city of Mannheim enjoyed its own musical renaissance that Leopold Mozart likened to "rays like the sun's spread throughout all Germany, indeed all of Europe." For musicologists, these rays produced pages of manuscript that populate the light as numerous as dust specks, and university library shelving sags under the weight of their mostly unused modern editions. Little wonder why conventional wisdom states that the music of the Mannheim School is something that belongs squarely in its own time, without much to offer to ours.
The Sonata No. 1 in G from a set of six by that "most conservative" of Mannheim Schoolers Franz Xaver Richter composed for two flutes without continuo is actually the most interesting thing on the disc through its clear, uncluttered, skillful, and even innovative use of counterpoint, although it does run a little long. The Quintetto in G, Op. 10/6, of Johann Baptist Wendling has an agreeable Andante and an appealing Finale, but an unbearable opening Allegro. Ignaz Holzbauer is better known as the chief opera composer in Mannheim; his Quintetto in G is actually a Baroque dance suite that sounds like something straight out of Georg Philipp Telemann except that it's a tad more galant. The most striking aspect of the Holzbauer and Matthias Franciscus Cannabich's Sonata in E minor is the super fine harpsichord of Christoph Anselm Noll, whose work is not consistently heard throughout the disc as these pieces tend to be on either side of the historical dividing line as far as continuo is concerned. The appeal of son Christian Cannabich's mercifully two-movement Quartetto in F, Op. 1/5, is immediate and sounds the most like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart of any music found here; Mozart himself once commented that Cannabich the younger was the best concertmaster he'd ever seen in his life. The opening Quartetto in D, Op. 5/1, by Carl Joseph Toeschi is simply not memorable and will confirm the usual suspicions about Mannheim music; one is thereby encouraged to sample the disc a little farther into the program.
The
Neue Düsseldorfer Hofmusik plays this music note perfect, but it only occasionally arrives at a sense of spontaneity and excitement; much of it sounds merely dutiful. Coviello Classics' recording is brilliant and very full but seems a little hollow at first, one does get used to it, but wonders why the empty part of the sonic spectrum just stands there like a hole in the ozone layer.