Corelli didn’t write much, but these ground-breaking Opus 6 concertos more than compensated for any statistical lack. It’s a pity, however, that quality is never a prime feature in these rough-hewn performances by the South West German Chamber Orchestra and Günter Wich. The recordings, which appear to date from the early 1970s, have little focus or ambient warmth. Anyone wishing to hear these works to good advantage will certainly want a well-engineered production which enables the polyphonic interplay between instrumental voices to register fully. The problem here is that limited spatial distribution across the sound field hardly allows contrapuntal detailing to make its proper impact on the listener. The problem arises mainly in the fast sections of course, and the first movement of Opus 6 No. 2, with its lively exchanges between instrumental groups reveals the limitations of this production to disappointing effect.
A further drawback concerns balance of continuo players; the cello and harpsichord seem to have been taped at differing levels from take to take, with the result that you’ll constantly have to alter the volume control to balance them realistically. In sum, these are workaday readings whose general disregard for Baroque performance conventions and indifferent production values would hardly be tolerated today, even assuming they were three decades ago.
