Fantasticus - extravagant and virtuosic music of the German seventeenth century (Classical album);

Quicksilver's recording, FANTASTICUS, features extraordinary 17th century German music in the Stilus Fantasticus, 'instituted to display genius,' in the words of mathematician Athanasius Kirchner. The recording explores one of the cultural revolutions of the time, the development of the sonata, a purely instrumental work with no agenda but the imagination of the composer and no standard formal shape except the passionate give-and-take of friends in conversation. This 'new music' is virtuosic, experimental, unexpected, and deeply moving: the closest we come to wordless rhetoric.