Fux, chiefly remembered by music students for his theoretical treatise Gradus ad Parnassum, was Kapellmeister at the Vienna Court for over 25 years, between 1715 and his death in 1741. Record companies have not, by and large, paid much heed to his music, which consists mainly of operas and sacred vocal works, though from time to time pieces by him appear on disc only to disappear again with indecent haste – a reflection, no doubt, of his standing with record buyers. Fux deserves better and perhaps with the arrival of this release will acquire a following, albeit a modest one.
In 1701 he published seven partitas in the form of dance suites, under the title Concentus musico-instrumentalis. They were his Op. 1 and he dedicated them to the son of Emperor Leopold I who obligingly paid for the printing of the parts. They are splendid pieces whose character ranges from the noble gestures of the Lullian French ouverture with its appended suite of dances, to the intimacy of chamber music trios. Paul Dombrecht, with his instrumental group Il Fondamento, has chosen the two works from the set that owe most to their French models, the Second and Fourth Suites. Both are scored for two oboes, bassoon, strings and continuo. The remaining two pieces on the disc are similarly scored, although they belong to a sizeable miscellany of such works that remained and indeed still remain unpublished.
The B flat Suite from Concentus musico-instrumentalis has been previously recorded by Nikolaus Harnoncourt; it was included on the Vienna LP in EMI’s now elderly Special List anthology “Music in European Cities and Residences” (1/65 – nla). The D minor Suite appeared in the UK on a Philips LP in their Fourfront series (3/66 – nla). The other two suites are recorded here for the first time. The performances are excellent if sometimes lacking that exuberance characteristic of Harnoncourt’s Vienna Concentus Musicus in its heyday. One of the finest movements here is an airy, expansive chaconne which concludes the B flat Suite. Il Fondamento play it gracefully but the performance lacks the sharply defined articulation of Harnoncourt’s 1960 version with its preference for saccade rhythms. The comparison is not as invalid as it might at first seem since the older recording is available on CD in Germany. But non globe-trotters should be well content with this new Vanguard disc. There is a wealth of interesting music here and movements such as the aforementioned chaconne have haunted my memory for 30 years.'