Overtures

It still seems that — occasionally — musical pearls that have remained hidden by the veil of history resurface. This is without any doubt true for the concerti and overtures of Johann Christoph Pez. Pez clearly demonstrates in his concertos and suites that he was capable of much more than simply composing in the styles of his more famous peers: his unusual personality is especially expressed through the great dramatic power of his French overtures, worthy of Keiser, or a young Handel; through the sublime fusion of French and Italian stylistic elements, where he reaches at least the level of his German contemporary Muffat, also a proponent of the Vermischter Geschmack; and through his seemingly inexhaustible melodic inventiveness, that would only be equalled after his death by as great a figure as Telemann. In short, Johan Christoph Pez isn't just one of the many composers that could be resurrected from obscurity simply in order to satisfy a desire for originality: his work is surely of much greater importance than has yet been recognised, and his concertos and suites represent — if not the most essential — certainly the most varied and attractive part of it his oeuvre.