Abel: Mr Abel's Fine Airs

Carl Friedrich Abel (1723–1787) was a contemporary of J C Bach, and a fashionable performer and promoter in London in the eighteenth century. By that time the viola da gamba was a rarity, but Abel’s performances sparked a revival of interest among performers and audiences. The works recorded on this disc (six of which have never been previously recorded) can be seen as musical expositions of sensibility, inhabiting the same tragic world as the gamba solos in J S Bach’s Passions. Abel’s contemporary Charles Burney commented on the musician’s ability to ‘breathe’ the notes as he played them, and this extraordinary sensitivity is present too in the beautiful playing of Susanne Heinrich.

CDA67628  77 minutes 33 seconds
GRAMOPHONE AWARD WINNER
GRAMOPHONE EDITOR'S CHOICE
DIAPASON D'OR
‘This delightful release … Abel was one of the last masters of the viola da gamba, and in these unaccompanied pieces he reveals an intimate art … Heinrich brings to them exactly the right bl ...
‘Heinrich plays them rather as Abel himself might have, with a sort of quiet affection as if she were playing for a small group in a room … I wish it would go on forever. There are a number of re ...
‘Until the release of this new recording the fascinating world of Abel's gamba music has been pretty much a closed book … Abel inclined towards simplicity and elegance, and Heinrich is always at ...