“It is difficult to imagine a better recording of these pieces” (American Record Guide). Having been born half a century after Heinrich Schütz, the ‘father of German musicians’, and a little less than half a century before J. S. Bach, Dietrich Buxtehude was a living link between the founder of Protestant Baroque music and its greatest master. Buxtehude’s Seven Sonatas, Op. 2 possess a very personal stamp of unpredictability, virtuosity and expressive power. Of particular note are Buxtehude’s use of stylised dances in Sonata No. 1 and his quasi-improvisatory passages in the ‘fantastic style’ as used in Sonata No. 5. The Seven Sonatas, Op. 1 are available on Naxos 8.557248.