Johann Jakob Walther (1650-1718) Hortulus (...)

David Plantier, after attracting widespread press attention with his Westhoff CD - ‘Choc du Monde de la Musique’, ‘Diapason Découverte’, ‘Il Miglio di mese’, ‘Exceptionnel’, nominated for the Cannes Classical Awards, ***** in BBC Music Magazine - continues his exploration of eighteenth-century German music with a project devoted to Johann Jakob Walther.

Westhoff and Walther both trained in Dresden as members of one of the most famous court orchestras in Baroque Europe. Along with Heinrich Biber, these two extraordinary violinist-composers spectacularly extended their instrument’s technical capacity while at the same time giving us superb works of pure music, astonishing in their rich variety and beauty.

In his Hortulus Chelicus, published at Mainz in 1688, Walther left one of the most important collections of violin music of the late seventeenth century. Comprising the extravagant total of 28 pieces, it includes both works of a deliberately accessible standard of difficulty and others that are highly virtuosic. The set presents the entire range of current forms: suites made up of preludes and dances, passacaglias, arias with variations, and imitative pieces (depicting the lute, the cuckoo, the hen, etc.), a genre of which Walther had become one of the most committed advocates. His Serenata is the most brilliant example of this. In the space of a few minutes, the violin is transformed successively into an orchestra, an organ with tremolo stop, a hurdy-gurdy, a harp, a trumpet, and so on, in a true tour de force. Yet Walther does not shine only in special effects, as can be seen in the superb, sombre Suite in C minor, whose guiding thread is the lamento, a highly fashionable affect throughout the seventeenth century. The whole suite possesses an atmosphere of profound gravity, even the dances. The Aria in G minor is a fine example of a variation piece. The well-developed initial theme is followed by several variations which concentrate more on the expressive qualities and tone-colours of the instrument than on sheer virtuosity.