There are all sorts of faults to be found with this disc of Música Barroca Catalana (Catalan Baroque music), recorded in 1991 by the
Diatessaron ensemble and reissued in 2003. The sound is boxy. The English translations of the rather opaque liner notes are sloppy, at times to the point of being unintelligible. And, the players alter the instrumentation of the original works -- not an unheard-of move in the Baroque realm, of course, but annoying when it's a little-known repertory that's being introduced. Wouldn't it have been nice to hear what Joan Barter's Respirad flores, fragrancias sounded like with its original accompanimental shawm? It's replaced here with an oboe.
All that aside, this is entertaining music (mostly more pre-Classical than Baroque), enthusiastically rendered, and that has to count for something. Five Catalan composers of the eighteenth century are represented, each with his own history and resultant way of balancing Catalonia's musical isolation during this era against progressive Italian influences. The two works by Barter fall under the Spanish genre label of tono a solo, a term that meant different things at different times but represented a tradition very different from the Italian opera aria. There are delightful galant chamber works from Salvador Reixac and from one of the brother pair Joan Pla and Josep Pla, who were members of Niccolò Jommelli's orchestra at the Stuttgart court in Germany. And there are Italian-style vocal works by Josep Pradas and Joaquim García, the latter displaying the distinctive stately tone of the late Baroque as new styles flowered all around. There are nifty surprises in each of these works (those by Barter are perhaps the most interesting), and in no way does Música Barroca Catalana offer anything less than a pleasant hour of listening to music that will be new to all except Catalan listeners.