It should not be surprising if the name of German-born violinist and composer Thomas Baltzar is unfamiliar to listeners, for his name and most of his compositions have been all but lost to oblivion. Thanks to violinist
Patrick Wood, however, we have this short set of recovered works for solo violin. Written some 65 years before Bach would write his solo sonatas and partitas, Baltzar's compositions already show him to be an unrecognized innovator in his extensive use of polyphony throughout his works. The final four tracks on the album also show Baltzar's use of scordatura -- a procedure by which an instrument is tuned to different open strings than usual to produce a different color to its sound -- which was an unknown technique in Germany at the time.
Wood's playing does great justice to Baltzar's works and speaks well of his exhaustive efforts to unearth them. His playing is very strong and muscular, much like
Nathan Milstein's playing of Bach. Intonation is quite precise, and his voicing of the polyphonic texture of the music allows listeners to easily follow the melody as it wends its way through the range of the violin. Despite its rather short length, this album is a welcome discovery of unheard solo violin music performed convincingly.