Italian Concerti Grossi Giovanni Battista Sammartini (1700 or 1701 - 1775) Sinfonia in A Major Tomaso Albinoni (1671 - 1751) Sonata a cinque in G Minor, Op....
Italian Concerti Grossi
Giovanni Battista Sammartini (1700 or 1701 - 1775)
Sinfonia in A Major
Tomaso Albinoni (1671 - 1751)
Sonata a cinque in G Minor, Op. 2, No.6
Antonio Vivaldi (1678 - 1741)
Concerto in A Minor con due violini obligati
Op. 3, No.8, RV 522
Pietro Locatelli (1695 - 1764)
Concerto Grosso in G Minor, Op. 1, No.12
Francesco Manfredini (1684 - 1762)
Sinfonia No.10 in C Minor
Arcangelo Corelli (1653 - 1713)
Concerto Grosso in D Major, Op. 6, No.4
Francesco Geminiani (1687 - 1762)
Concerto Grosso in C Minor, Op. 2, No.2
Alessandro Scarlatti (1660 - 1725)
Concerto Grosso No.3 in F Major
By the early eighteenth century Italy had become still more firmly
established as the source of much European musical activity. Italian opera held
a dominant position in the musical theatre, while Italian instrumental music and
its performers were heard from Lisbon to London, St. Petersburg and Vienna. The
Italian instrumental style found its most influential expression in the work of
the violinist Arcangelo Corelli. Born in Fusignano in 1653, he studied in
Bologna, before establishing himself in Rome in the 1670s, entering the service
of Queen Christina of Sweden towards the end of the decade, and later benefiting
from the patronage of Cardinal Pamphili, with regular performances at the
latter's Palazzo al Corso. His principal patron for the last twenty years of his
life was the young Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, nephew of Pope Alexander VIII. Corelli's
influence was very considerable in a number of ways. He was greatly respected as
a teacher of the violin, while his compositions, played by musicians disciplined
under his direction, served as models for a coming generation. His published
works include 48 trio sonatas, a dozen violin sonatas and, issued posthumously
in 1714 in Amsterdam, a set of twelve concerti grossi, Opus 6. The fourth of
these, the Concerto grosso in D major, is characteristic inform and
content. A brief slow introduction, a call to the listener's attention, is
followed by a lively Allegro, in which the two solo violins and solo cello of
the concertino group are contrasted with the rest of the string orchestra, the
ripieno players. There is a moving Adagio, a short fast movement and a final
movement in the rhythm of a gigue, ending with a rapid and emphatic concluding
section.
Alessandro Scarlatti, father of the prolific composer of keyboard sonatas,
Domenico, and member of a family of musicians ubiquitous in Naples, was born in
Palermo in 1660 and had his musical training in Rome, where he enjoyed the
patronage of Queen Christina of Sweden. In 1684 he was appointed maestro di
cappella to the Spanish Viceroy of Naples. There, for the next twenty years, he
busied himself in the composition and performance of operas that enjoyed
currency elsewhere in Italy and as far north as Brunswick and Leipzig. In 1702
he moved to Florence in hope of an appointment at the court of Prince Ferdinando
de'Medici and then to Rome. He returned to Naples in 1708 at the invitation of a
new Viceroy and it seems to have been in his later years, during which he
maintained also his connection with Rome, that he turned his attention to purely
instrumental music, after his long involvement with opera, serenatas, cantatas
and church music. His Concerti grossi are relatively conservative in style,
offering music that is attractive enough, but lacking the innovative spirit of
his operas and their overtures, seminal examples of the Italian three- movement
symphony.
Venice by the early eighteenth century lacked political power, but continued
as a centre for foreign visitors, attracted by the beauty of the place and its
delights and novelties, not least the music offered by the four charitable
institutions for orphan, illegitimate or indigent girls. At one of these
establishments, the Ospedale della Pietà, the red-haired priest Antonio Vivaldi
was employed intermittently from the year of his ordination in 1703 until his
departure in 1741 for Vienna, where he died shortly after his arrival. Vivaldi,
also active as a composer of opera, was himself a violinist of great
distinction, providing the Pietà with a vast quantity of concertos for various
instruments, many of which enjoyed wide popularity abroad. A set of twelve
concertos for strings and continuo, with varied numbers of solo violins, was
published in 1711 with a dedication to Prince Ferdinando of Tuscany and under
the title L'estro armonico, numbered Opus 3. The second concerto of the
set, with a solo group of two violins and cello, the Concerto in A minor, in the
newly established three-movement form, was later transcribed for organ by Johann
Sebastian Bach. It is a lively and spirited work, its course interrupted by an
expressive slow movement.
Prince Ferdinando did not outlive his father and barely outlived Corelli,
dying in 1713. The Venetian composer Tomaso Albinoni also benefited from his
patronage, although initially himself of independent means, the son of a
well-to-do paper-merchant. He dedicated his first set of sinfonie and concerti,
published in 1700, to another patron, the Gonzaga Duke of Mantua. These
relatively early works continue the tradition of Corelli, with four movements,
slow - fast - slow - fast.
Manfredini, Locatelli, Geminiani and Sammartini belong to another generation.
Francesco Manfredini, born in Pistoia in 1684, like Corelli studied music in
Bologna, in the musical establishment attached to the great Basilica of San
Petronio, where he worked intermittently, with a period seemingly in the service
of the ruler of Monaco. He spent the last 35 years of his life in his native
city as maestro di cappella at the cathedral. His instrumental works belong to
the period before his return to Pistoia, written and published in Bologna in the
first twenty years of the century. The Sinfonia in C minor follows the
established pattern of the church sonata, an introductory slow movement followed
by a contrapuntal faster movement. A second slow movement precedes a final rapid
contrapuntal movement in compound metre.
Pietro Antonio Locatelli was born in Bergamo in 1695 and may perhaps have
studied very briefly with Corelli in Rome in 1712. He enjoyed the early
patronage of Cardinal Ottoboni and later of a patron of Vivaldi, the Habsburg
Governor of Mantua, under whom he held the title of virtuoso da camera. In 1729
he settled in Amsterdam, restricting his own career as a virtuoso performer and
directing his attention largely to gifted amateurs. His first collection of
concerti grossi was published in Amsterdam in 1721 and revised eight years
later, when he made his home in that city. Like Geminiani, he includes a viola
in the concerti no group, with two violins and cello, while adopting the order
of Corelli's concerti grossi, eight church concerti being followed by four
chamber concerti, sets of dance movements. The Concerto grosso in G minor,
Opus 1, No.12, includes the customary German dance, the Allemanda and a
Sarabande, and ends, less usually, with a Gavotte.
The violinist and composer Francesco Geminiani, born in Lucca in 1687, was a
pupil of Corelli and of Alessandro Scarlatti in Rome, but moved in 1714 to
London, where he initially enjoyed the patronage of Baron Kielmansegge, who, as
chamberlain to the King, had been instrumental in Handel's appointment in
Hanover and his further acceptance by the new court in London. Geminiani had
very considerable success in England and in Ireland both as a composer and as a
performer. His treatises on various aspects of performance had wide circulation
in his own time and have proved a valuable source of information for later
scholars and players. He died in Dublin in 1762. The six concerti grossi that
constitute Geminiani's Opus 2 were published in London in 1732 and follow
Corelli in form and style.
The work of Giovanni Battista Sammartini leads forward to a new kind of
instrumental music, the symphony, which had much of its development in Vienna
and South Germany. Sammartini himself was probably born in Milan, the son of an
emigrant French oboist, and spent his life in the city, where he enjoyed a
reputation that in Italy was largely local, but abroad was very considerable.
Some have suggested a strong influence on Haydn, who denied any such thing,
although an uncontested case is made for Sammartini's influence on his pupil
Gluck. His earlier symphonies, scored for strings and affected by the example of
Vivaldi, are nevertheless pointing forward to a future age of classicism, a
trait apparent in the Sinfonia in A major.
Capella Istropolitana
The Capella Istropolitana was founded in 1983 by members of the Slovak
Philharmonic Orchestra, at first as a chamber orchestra and then as an orchestra
large enough to tackle the standard classical repertoire. Based in Bratislava,
its name drawn from the ancient name still preserved in the Academia
Istropolitana, the orchestra works in the recording studio and undertakes
frequent tours throughout Europe. Recordings by the orchestra on the Naxos label
include The Best of Baroque Music, Bach's Brandenburg Concertos,
fifteen each of Mozart's and Haydn's symphonies as well as works by Handel,
Vivaldi and Telemann.
Jaroslav Kr(e)chek
The Czech conductor and composer Jaroslav Kr(e)chek was
born in southern Bohemia in 1939 and studied composition and conducting at the
Prague Conservatory. In 1962 he moved to Pilsen as a conductor and radio
producer and in 1967 returned to Prague to work as a recording supervisor for
Supraphon. In the capital he founded the Chorea Bohemica ensemble and in 1975
the chamber orchestra Musica Bohemica. In Czechoslovakia he is well known for
his arrangements of Bohemian folk music, while his electro-acoustic opera Raab
was awarded first prize at the International Composer's Competition in Geneva.
He is the artistic leader of Capella Istropolitana.