Mauro Lopes Ferreira, Nicholas Robinson (violins), Ettore Belli (viola), Luca Peverini cello), Ugo di Giovanni (theorbo) & Rinaldo Alessandrini (harpsichord, organ & director)
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The programme chosen for this CD by the eminent early music specialist Rinaldo Alessandrini and performed by members of his hand-picked ensemble Concerto Italiano illustrate most of the forms that instrumental music adopted in the course of the seventeenth century. Amongst the composers featured are Giovanni Gabrieli, Frescobaldi, Zanetti, and Torelli, as well as lesser known figures of the period including Giovanni de Macque, Evaristo dall’Abaco, and Giovanni Bononcini.
In 1587 the publication in Venice of a Ricercar per sonar by Andrea Gabrieli was symptomatic of a new order in the history of music. The sole vocation of the art of Europe was no longer to accompany a text, and purely instrumental music was now established in its own right. The city of Venice played a special role in the gradual abandonment of Renaissance forms, where the freedom of thought permitted by the republic and its status as the publishing capital of the world facilitated an unprecedented development of secular music, and it was there in 1617 that Biagio Marini published the first sonata for violin and continuo. The selection of 17th century pieces performed on this CD was entirely recorded by a four-part group (two violins, viola, and continuo), a typically Italian formation that was to lead to the birth of the string quartet in the eighteenth century.
Luigi Rossi: Orfeo
Orfeo: Fantaisie
Giovanni Gabrieli: Canzon I a 4, C. 186, "La Spiritata"
Canzon I a 4, C. 186, "La Spiritata"
Tarquinio Merula: Il primo libro delle canzoni, a 4, Op. 1
Il primo libro delle canzoni, a 4, Op. 1: No. 6. La Chremasca
Giovanni Maria Trabaci: Consonanze stravaganti
Consonanze stravaganti
Girolamo Alessandro Frescobaldi: Canzona Quinta a 4
Canzona No. 5 a 4
Tarquinio Merula: Capriccio cromatico
Capriccio cromatico
Giovanni Salvatore: Canzoni francesi
Canzoni francesi: No. 2. Del nono tuono naturale
Dario Castello: Sonata decima sesta a 4
Sonata decima sesta a 4
Gasparo Zanetti: Il scolaro … per imparar a suonare di violino
Intrada e balletto del marchese di caravazzo con la sua gagliarda
Alemana
La bella pedrina
Aria del granduca
Gagliarda detta la lisfeltina
Il spagnoletto
Gallaria d'amor, gagliarda e canario
Biagio Marini: Per ogni sorte di strumento musicale diversi generi di sonate, Op. 22
Per ogni sorte di strumento musicale diversi generi di sonate, Op. 22: Passacaglia a 4
Giovanni Battista Legrenzi: Le Cetra, Book 3, Op. 10: Sonata No. 2
I. (Andante)
II. Allegro
III. Adagio
IV. Presto e allegro
Giovanni Bononcini: Sinfonie da chiesa a 4, Op. 5
I. Grave
II. Allegro
III. Adagio
IV. Non tanto presto
Giuseppe Torelli: Concerto musicali in G major, Op. 6, No. 1
I. Presto
II. (Allegro)
III. Adagio
IV. Allegro
Evaristo Felice Dall'Abaco: Concerto a 4 da chiesa in D minor, Op. 2, No. 1
I. Largo
II. Allegro
III. Andante
IV. Allegro assai
9th March 2012
***
“This collection focuses largely on works by lesser-known composers such as Zanetti, Merula and Salvatore, but includes two standout works in the "Fantaisie" attributed to Luigi Rossi, and Frescobaldi's "Canzoni da Sonare", the composer's first significant break with strict counterpoint.”
The Independent on Sunday
18th March 2012
****
“The playing is never less than polished, though the bowing of the faster movements is routinely pithy. Concerto Italiano's personality is better expressed in the piercing suspensions of the slower pieces, such as the anonymous Fantasia on the tears of Orpheus.”
June 2012
“Concerto Italiano's lean ensemble of a string quartet, harpsichord and archlute plays the descending chromatic figures in a lamentful Fantasie from Rossi's Orfeo with finesse and sensitivity...Alessandrini's programme has a seamless artistic flow that gently pulls the listener along an illuminating narrative...[He] ensures that later music by Legrenzi and Torelli possess astute dance rhythms and shapely harmonic details.”
12th June 2012
“This is a superb release in every way. The music is engaging and entertaining as well as being excellently played and recorded. It is also historically informative and instructive and I recommend it wholeheartedly.”
Click on any of the works listed above for alternative recordings.
Orfeo: Fantaisie
