Trio Sonatas

Johann Joachim Quantz wrote over 300 flute concertos for Frederick II, King of Prussia, works that have increasingly been recognized for their wealth of invention. Before his years in Berlin, however, Quantz had worked in Dresden where he wrote a series of trio sonatas. The genre had been codified by Arcangelo Corelli and was the most popular form of chamber music at the time. Quantz fashioned elegant dialogues between the instruments, fugal passages, the melodic element of the trios always highlighted next to the counterpoint. These concise, eloquent works blend styles and musical languages in a way that foreshadows his larger-scale concertos.