Dorian Komanoff Bandy, Hank Knox & Elinor Frey - Lovers and Mourners: Variations and Sonatas from 17th-Century Germany (2023)

Lovers and Mourners: Variations and Sonatas from 17th-century Germany, offers a comprehensive glimpse into the lives of virtuoso composer-performers Johann Jakob Walther, Heinrich Biber, and Johann Georg Pisendel. The Composers featured on Lovers and Mourners drew upon the “stylus phantasticus,” a 17th-century Italian idiom whose features were marked by jagged shifts of affect and intended to display the player’s technical command and expressive abilities. Violinist Dorian Komanoff Bandy nimbly guides the listener through a labyrinth of variation sets and themes, simultaneously reproducing faithful interpretations of the music while injecting his own unique touch. Lovers and Mourners boasts a brief, yet intense survey of one of the richest chapters in the history of the virtuoso composer-performer.

Tracklist
01. Schenck: Suonate a Violino e Violone o Cimbalo, Op. 7: I. Fantazia in A Minor
02. Walther: Scherzi da Violino solo con il basso continuo: IX. Sonata in D Major
03. Walther: Scherzi da Violino solo con il basso continuo: V. Aria in E Minor “Melancholia”
04. Biber: The Rosary Sonatas: XVI. Passacaglia in G Minor "The Guardian Angel"
05. Biber: Sonata No. 6 in C Minor, C. 143
06. Biber: Sonata No. 3 in F Major, C. 140
07. Pisendel: Sonata in E Minor for Violin and Basso Continuo: I. Largo
08. Pisendel: Sonata in E Minor for Violin and Basso Continuo: II. Moderato
09. Pisendel: Sonata in E Minor for Violin and Basso Continuo: III. Arioso
10. Pisendel: Sonata in E Minor for Violin and Basso Continuo: IV. Scherzando
11. Becker: Zweistimmigen Sonaten und Suiten: Sonata in D Major