Much of the material recorded on the independent Orion label in the 1960s and 1970s is still fresh and little touched by other performers, and the reissue on Canada's Marquis label of these Classical-era works for harp is sure to attract lovers of the instrument. Despite his Italian name, Francesco Antonio Rosetti was actually a Bohemian, born Frantisek Antonín Rössler; his career encompassed phases in France and Germany. His six Sonatas for harp, Op. 2, are sweet, delicious miniatures, mostly in three movements that add up to just six or seven minutes in total. (Each sonata gets one track on the CD.) They are economical without being slight. More expansive at 11 minutes plus is the Sonata in E flat major, Op. 34/1, of Jan Ladislav Dussek, one of four short Dussek sonatas included. Notwithstanding faint praise in the booklet notes, this sonata gives a good idea of what
Beethoven might have sounded like had he written a harp sonata. The opening fast movement solves its structural challenge neatly: where a Beethovenian sonata design calls for a piano, say, to play loudly and define a new dynamic space -- something that isn't possible on a harp -- Dussek uses virtuosity in the harp's high registers to achieve an interesting if rather flashy parallel effect. The other Dussek sonatas all have distinctive points as well; one of them, given the subtitle "The Lass of Richmond Hill," includes music based an English folk song that seems to have appeared in anthologies of the time. Unfortunately we learn nothing about it from the sketchy liner notes, which misleadingly treat the performers in the present tense even though they were written in 1971 (there's no indication that the original liner notes are being reproduced or adapted). Sound, unlike other discs in this series, is acceptable, although the highest notes of the harp have a tendency to drop out in chords. Harpist
Susann McDonald plays everything cleanly and attractively, without letting the mannerisms of later harp music intrude on the Classical language.