Jones, Richard: Chamber Airs for a Violin (and Thorough Bass)

Emboldened by her experience of playing the 6 Sets of Lessons by Richard Jones, already released on Glossa, and chancing upon another book of music which included violin sonatas by Jones, Mitzi Meyerson resolved to champion further this forgotten musical figure from the first half of the 18th century in England, in a manner comparable to her earlier defence of Muffat and Balbastre.

Joined by violinist Kreeta-Maria Kentala and cellist Lauri Pulakka, Meyerson has now recorded all eight of the sonatas, published in London in 1735 as Chamber Airs for a Violin (and Thorough Bass), and makes evident how this contemporary of Handel developed his own individual and unpredictable style, but with plenty of echoes of music by the likes of Leclair and Corelli, as well as the earlier Baroque England thrown in for good measure. This is technically secure and demanding music for the performers - Jones was a violinist himself, acting as the concertmaster for the Drury Lane Orchestra in London – which will be a delight for lovers of Baroque chamber music and which will serve to demonstrate, once more, how in music “the perfect is the enemy of the good” for composers caught in the long shadow of Georg Friedrich Handel.

The three musicians on this new Glossa recording talk winningly in a joint booklet interview about their pleasure in performing these idiosyncratic early Georgian violin sonatas.