Unter Kollegen

Spuren V | Works by Matthias Weckmann, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Johann Jakob Froberger and others, with poetry from Germany, France and Italy

Keyboard music of the 17th century was a European conversation, and Matthias Weckmann was among its most eloquent voices. A pupil of Heinrich Schütz, Weckmann embodied the connection between the North German tradition and the great musical centres of southern Europe - a thread running through the entire century. Frescobaldi, Froberger, Muffat and Couperin moved within the same orbit and remain highly regarded figures of a keyboard art that constantly reinvented itself through variation, counterpoint and expressively charged melody. What Schütz meant for the vocal music of his time finds its instrumental counterpart in the works of his colleagues.

Benjamin-Joseph Steens, a Belgian-French specialist in historical keyboard instruments and professor at the Conservatoire in Strasbourg, performs this recital on the Hubert clavichord of the Heinrich-Schütz-Haus Weißenfels. Dr. Maik Richter, director of the Heinrich-Schütz-Haus Weißenfels, reads texts by 17th-century writers that give apt words to the European sound world.