Today, the five-string cello is treated as an exotic and rarely-played cousin of the standard cello. However, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was simply one of the many instruments used in the family of bass violins, and was particularly important for virtuosic sonatas and solos.

Leila Schayegh, Václav Luks, and Felix Knecht present four of Franz Benda’s violin sonatas (and a movement extracted from another sonata) from a collection of 34 ornamented examples of the genre included in manuscript form among the holdings of the Berlin State Library. The ornamentation, provided for both the slow movements, for which Benda earned a reputation, as well as for faster ones, could serve as a sort of compendium of German period practice (Schayegh’s own notes suggest that the works hail from about 1760).

This disc brings together four sacred cantatas by composers who only infrequently feature in these pages. Best known of them is Georg Anton Benda, brother of the celebrated violinist Franz, who served Frederick the Great for over half-a-century. Georg Benda made a name for himself with his Singspiels and innovative melodramas, which made a deep impression on Mozart. There is nothing innovative about either of the two cantatas with instruments performed here, though from an expressive standpoint they are far from being run-of-the-mill. Both belong to a cycle prepared in 1761 while Benda was Music Director at the Court of Gotha.