Early Music Review - 113 – June 2006
This CD is a real joy: delightful and quite unknown music by a young acquaintance of Mozart’s, most attractively performed on period instruments or modern copies, very nicely presented in clean, forward and well-balanced recordings. The melodic, harmonic and textural qualities of this music are a real discovery, and the players deserve great credit for exhuming it and bringing it back to life. The Trio van Bruggen, who introduce the works in an informative note, are joined by two violists for the Quintet (1806/7), the dark sonorities of which they bring out nicely, though its lighter touches are fun too. Eberl was a productive composer in his short life (1765-1807), and we must hope for more exhumation of this kind (though much of his music is lost).
Peter Branscombe