Jed Wentz (flauto traverso)

Musica Ad Rhenum

Recordings of de Boismortier are apt to give unfailing pleasure: his music is as grateful on the ear as it is sympathetic to play, always effortlessly stylish, rarely aspiring towards profundity, centred around the recorder and flute of which he was an accomplished performer, capturing to perfection the elegant aesthetic of the French Baroque style.

This set shares those qualities, with the additional appeal of comprehensiveness. No survey of the French Baroque would be complete without Boismortier, but few performers have committed to disc more than a Sonata or Suite here and there, cherry‐picking from the composer’s prolific output of over one hundred published opus numbers, most of which contain six separate works.

Agreeable melodies apparently poured out of Boismortier; the Op.35 Suites and Op.44 Sonatas were written in 1731 and 1733 respectively, during a golden period of composition for him, and a highly profitable one, since he had acquired a royal warrant to engrave and publish all his own work. The Op.91 Sonatas date from the beginning of the 1740s, shortly before he became music director at the Théâtre de la foire in Paris. Here Boismortier achieved a perfect, an almost seamless blend of the French and Italian styles.

Jed Wentz is a scholar and flutist who has made many critically acclaimed recordings for Brilliant Classics, most of them with his own ensemble, Musica ad Rhenum, which consists of a flexible line‐up of no less stylish and experienced earlymusic performers. On this recording he is joined by gambist Cassandra Luckhardt, cellist Job ter Haar and harpsichordist Michael Borgstede. As usual Wentz contributes his own wide‐ranging essay to the booklet, including research which makes clear that a dogmatic, score‐bound performance will not do for Boismortier any more than it would for Brahms.