Johann Friedrich Fasch was a near contemporary of Bach’s, and in 1722 applied for the same job as Kantor of St Thomas’s in Leipzig (which Bach, of course, got). His music, however, may be more usefully compared to that of the man who turned down the Leipzig post, Telemann. Like Telemann, Fasch wrote instrumental music, church music and operas, and demonstrated in them sound craftsmanship and a fair measure of easy-on-the-ear appeal. But whereas Telemann held jobs in leading German cities and spread his fame with numerous canny publishing schemes, Fasch published not a note and spent most of his life in the relatively out-of-the-way court of Anhalt-Zerbst. It is for this reason, no doubt, that we hear relatively little of his music today.
Fasch also had an unusual predilection for reed instruments, and this release offers a neatly alternating sequence of three of his trio sonatas for two oboes and continuo, and four of his quartets for two oboes, obbligato bassoon and continuo. All are in typically polite (one might say Telemannesque) late baroque style, except for one G minor Trio which shows the modern features – repeated notes in the bass, much use of triplets in the melody line – of the emerging galant. They are performed in exemplary if unsensational fashion by this group of skilled musicians who have all either studied at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis or teach there now. In an unobtrusive way, Fasch makes considerable technical demands on his players, but oboists Katharina Arfken and Ann-Kathrin Bruggemann seem supremely untroubled by them, as for the most part does bassoonist Donna Agrell (though she does not quite match her colleagues’ agility in the opening movement of the D minor Quartet). Changes are imaginatively rung in the continuo department; among the options selected it is a nice change to hear a double-bass, and elsewhere a viola da gamba, playing chords a la lyra-viol. Pleasant stuff, then, if ultimately not hugely memorable.'