The Swiss cellist and viola da gamba player August Wenzinger (1905-1996), a student of Feuermann, was one of the 20th century pioneers of historically-informed performances of Baroque music, both through his performances on the gamba and his participation in various orchestras, principally that of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and the Capella Coloniensis. He gained fame in the 1950s through directing these groups. But he was active long before this in exploring Baroque music; he was one of the gamba players on the Busch Chamber Players' recording of the Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 in 1935, and in 1930, with a like-minded colleague, the flutist Gustav Scheck (1901-1984), he co-founded a Baroque ensemble, Kammermusikkreis Scheck-Wenzinger. This group made a handful of recordings in the late 1930s for Electrola, including this one featuring Scheck (his first name Italianized on this pressing as "Gustavo"!) as a soloist in a flute concerto attributed to Pergolesi - although most scholars seem fairly certain that it isn't actually his:
Pergolesi [attrib.]: Flute Concerto in G Major
and
Bach: Sarabande (from the Suite for lute, BWV 997, arr. Hinnenthal)
Gustav Scheck, flute and the Kammermusikkreis Scheck-Wenzinger
Recorded October 1938 and probably the summer of 1939
La Voce del Padrone S 10494 and S 10495, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 43.81 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 20.86 MB)
There are a couple of interesting aspects about this recording. One is that, when played at 78-rpm, the instruments appear to be tuned at A = 415 Hz, the current standard for what is called "low pitch" used by period-instrument ensembles! Surely this is one of the earliest examples of this on a recording (outside, perhaps, of the various Dolmetsch family recordings). The other is the sound of Scheck's flute: the tone is much closer to a recorder than to a modern metal flute, and I'm wondering whether he actually used an early flute for this recording. He was known for his interest in the Baroque flute; Hans-Martin Linde, also a specialist in this field, is Scheck's most famous student.
