Music for a viennese salon
Night Music’s debut album
Music for a Viennese Salon
(Avie Records, 2020)
Philadelphia-based period-instrument ensemble Night Music re-creates an afternoon of music making from October 1801 at the Austrian capital’s Palais Arnstein, with a flamboyant Quintet for flute and strings by Joseph Kraus, a duo by Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf for the unusual combination of viola and double bass, and a chamber arrangement – by the impresario Johann Peter Salomon in the same instrumentation as the Kraus Quintet – of perhaps the most notorious of symphonic surprises.
Critical acclaim for Music for a Viennese Salon:
The playing of Night Music’s musicians distinguishes itself through enormous richness of color and an approach that is fresh, pleasing, and easygoing. Flutist Steven Zohn scintillates with full tone and altogether offers up virtuosically brilliant mischief, astonishes with daredevil loop-the-loops, or surprises with a heavenly, golden voice in the Andante and Minuet of Haydn’s Symphony 94.
– Online Merker (Germany)
Steven Zohn’s clarity of tone is a delight in both the Kraus and Haydn. In the latter, the performers bring an infectious swing to the Minuet and a credibly symphonic sweep to the finale.
– BBC Music Magazine (UK)
The central Adagio [of the Dittersdorf duo] is particularly resplendent, and Heather Miller Lardin’s double-stopped accompaniment is a thing of subtle loveliness. . . . Night Music are most successful in flirting between the two domains that [Kraus’s quintet] scoring allows, retreating from orchestral richness into lucid chamber music textures for clever and persuasive effect.
– Grammophone (UK)
Classical Album of the Week
– WRTI (Philadelphia)
