We encounter the name of Johann Joseph Fux (1660-1741) in scholarly books more often than we hear his music. A favoured composer of three successive Habsburg emperors, he was a widely admired master of counterpoint, not least because of his famous treatise Gradus ad Parnassum (1725). Several recordings in recent years have revealed that he was a masterful composer of church music, but his instrumental works are recorded infrequently. His first publication, Concentus musico-instrumentalis (Nuremberg, 1701) was dedicated to the future emperor Joseph I. The nine part-books contain seven so-called ‘partitas’, actually diverse overtures, serenades and sinfonias for various forces, ranging from a chamber sonata (‘sinfonia’) for recorder, oboe and continuo up to a large-scale Serenade in C major scored for oboes, bassoon, trumpets and strings.

Neue Hofkapelle Graz present the first complete recording of Fux’s anthology, and dedicate it poignantly to Nikolaus Harnoncourt (who recorded two pieces from Concentus musico-instrumentalis on an early EMI album in 1963 and a different selection for Teldec’s Das Alte Werk in 1970). The sole surviving set of part-books is in the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, but four pages missing from the viola part-book necessitated judicious reconstruction by harpsichordist Michael Hell (who also plays recorder and co directs the ensemble with violinist Lucia Froihofer). The pieces are a cosmopolitan hotchpotch of French, Italian and German styles. The spirit of Lully is close at hand in the juxtaposition of lively and tender French dances in a Sinfonia in B flat. In a six-part Ouverture in G minor there are lovely passages for oboes and bassoon, exquisite solo violin-playing by Froihofer in a charming Italianate minuet, and the variations within the melancholic Passacaille reminded me of Purcell at his best. An Ouverture in C major is played by a string quartet with attractive conversational ease (a percussionist gets a little carried away, especially without a larger ensemble to moderate his impact), whereas 27 musicians make a festive sound in the Serenade in C major, in particular the expert contributions of entirely natural trumpets played by Jean-François Madeuf and Julian Zimmermann. These performances of musical wisdom and creative scholarship confirm that Fux was not merely a theoretical musician.