Janitsch - Sonatas, etc

The Guardian 60

Tempesta di Mare
(Chandos)

Though far less well known now than contemporaries such as Graun, Benda and Quantz, Johann Gottlieb Janitsch was also part of the group of musicians that Frederick the Great brought together in the 1730s, and which became the core of the court orchestra when he inherited the Prussian throne in 1740. Janitsch played the double bass, but he was also a prolific composer. Though only a fraction of his music has survived, those pieces include over 70 sonatas and 30 sinfonias. Much of that material was kept in the library of the Berlin Sing-Akademie, and was thought to have been destroyed during the second world war, but it resurfaced in Kiev in 1999 and subsequently returned to Berlin.

The Philadelphia-based baroque ensemble Tempesta di Mare includes a substantial overture and four sonatas in their Janitsch selection. They are tidy performances of what are equally tidy but otherwise fairly unremarkable mid-18th century pieces, though the sonatas da chiesa and sonatas di camera indicate Janitsch was writing for highly competent instrumentalists, and in the second half of the 18th century they were much admired, and remain a bit more than historical curios.