This release isn’t far off being the complete works of the Thuringian composer Andreas Oswald. Born in Weimar in 1634, he was appointed as an organist and chamber musician at the ducal court at the age of 16, but when the Kapelle was disbanded in 1662 moved to Eisenach, where he died two years later at the age of only 30.

We’ll never know if he could have made a bigger splash had he lived longer, but there is reason to suppose so, as in his time at Weimar he showed a lively interest in the modern stylus phantasticus ensemble sonata manner coming up from Italy, brought thither by the likes of Bertali, Pandolfi Mealli and Giovanni Valentini and taken up by such as Schmelzer and Biber. He made a good fist of it, too, and anyone fond of that spirited repertoire will surely want to hear these fine examples, well written with plenty of attractive and contrasting ideas, sustained energy and colourful scoring – the instrumentarium offers up violins, violas, viola da gamba, sackbut and dulcian, plus continuo.

Notable moments include the rhetorically enticing opening to the Sonata a 4 in G, a charming gigue-section in the Sonata for three violins remarkably similar in character to the Gigue Pachelbel later attached to his famous Canon, some rocking syncopations in a Sonata a 3 in D (track 8), a fair few fanfare figures dotted about (Oswald must have wished for a trumpet!), and an earthy Sonata ò verò Aria variation-set whose folksiness is maxed by a scordatura violin. Indeed, the only reason they are not better known seems to be that they were only discovered in the 1990s in an old German manuscript collection containing among other things 17 Oswald sonatas. Together with a sonata in another manuscript, these are the only known surviving pieces of his, and these two manuscripts the only sources.

Based in Jena, Capella Jenensis have made mid-German Baroque music their speciality and give thoroughly refined and stylish performances of 12 sonatas, at least seven of which seem not to have been recorded before. Perhaps they are not as sonically or rhetorically punchy as some other performers who have worked in this field, but then punch is not for everyone, and there really is nothing else to cavil about. There has so far been only one other recording devoted to Oswald – by the slightly more vigorous Chelycus, with Veronika Skuplik on violin – and if you put the two together you end up with 17 sonatas out of the full Oswald 18. D’oh!