Jacques Christian Michael Widerkehr.(Sound Recording Review)

Jacques Christian Michael Widerkehr. The Duosonatas. Bart Schneeman; Pablo Giacometti. Channel Classics CCS SA 19204, 2004.

While the details of Jacques Widerkehr's life story are a matter of some dispute, what is commonly accepted about its general shape follows a depressingly familiar pattern: born in the Alsatian city of Strasbourg in 1759, his music was wildly popular throughout France by the end of the eighteenth century. By the end of the following century, however, he was largely forgotten and there was already historical confusion between the details of his own career and that of his brother Phillipe. Oboist Bart Schneeman and pianist Paolo Giacometti came across Widerkehr's E minor sonata for oboe and fortepiano quite by accident and were sufficiently charmed by it to follow up with a bit of research on the composer; this led them to the discovery that in addition to that sonata, Widerkerhr had written two others for the same instrumentation, but that no editions of these were commercially available. Nonetheless, Schneeman was able to locate two 1817 Erard editions of the second and third sonatas in an archive, and all ...