None of Buxtehude's surviving music is known to have been performed at one of Lubeck's famous Abendmusiken but we can say with some certainty that a number of his vocal works, including oratorios (music sadly lost), would have been heard and sponsored by Hanseatic merchants. Without dwelling on those early concerts, it is significant that by around 1670 Buxtehude had moved these quin-annual events to 4 pm from noon so that they could follow immediately after the afternoon service on a Sunday, no doubt in an attempt to ensure a good audience and to raise the profile of the Abendmusik tradition. As a title to Skip Sempe's foray into Buxtehude's instrumental music, it is a curious one since these important events were mainly notable for their vocal contributions and increasingly, as a forum for oratorio. I suspect that the term here is used in its broadest sense as meaning music for church concerts and it is indeed likely that chamber pieces figured regularly in Abendmusiken.
The majority of chamber works here constitute the only important publications made of Buxtehude's music in his lifetime. At his best, they are right up Sempe's street, ''provoking the sense of wonder, the unusual'' and encouraging the performer to engage in a free, spontaneous and concentrated rhetorical expression. The sonatas Nos. 1 and 6 from Op. 1 are cases in point, where at F Buxtehude presents an affecting juxtaposition of recitative-like proclamations, dances and tautly constructed figures, secretly worked out behind closed doors. Often, as in Op. 2 No. 3, this is an elusive cocktail, rarefied and stylistically paradoxical at times (in the way Purcell can be) and in the process highly satisfying and original. Like Muffat, if less open and Southern, his hybrid influences are fun to spot, darting between Italian techniques, French rhythmic aplomb, English gamba techniques (including the rare and almost exclusive English scoring of violin, gamba and continuo of Coperario, Jenkins and Lawes) and never forsaking good North German contrapuntal rigour. If this is the most interesting Buxtehude chamber music disc since Goebel's pioneering collection (originally marketed as ''Deutsche Kammermusik vor Bach'', 6/89) and Trio Sonnerie's stylish performances, then it is mainly due to Manfredo Kraemer's outstanding violin playing. Clearly comprehending the direction of each piece, despite constant excursions, Kraemer is a powerful 'orator' who takes no prisoners but his playing can be deliciously limpid too.
Of the unusual gems, there is a superb double-harpsichord Passacaglia with a theme very similar to Bach's monolithic organ piece of the same name, two harpsichords create a liberating and noble concoction, as lovers of BWV1061 will attest. The ensemble and match between the violin and gamba, however, is less appealing, the latter not long-breathed enough for my taste; when joined by the second violin, as in the Sonata in C, intonation suffers and the dialogues become too frantic. But if the fine Contrapunctus surges and peaks too often, thereby losing a feeling for controlled evolution, then this is a fairly small price to pay for a lively and imaginative programme of some fine music.'