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Pietro Antonio
LOCATELLI (1695-1764)
Introduttioni Teatrali and Concerti, op. 4 (1735)
Introduttione No.1 in D major (5:37]
Introduttione No.2 in F major [6:27]
Introduttione No.3 in B flat major [5:37]
Introduttione No.4 in G major [4:23]
Introduttione No.5 in D major [6:43]
Introduttione No.6 in C major [5:46]
Concerto No.7 in D major [11:22]
Concerto No.8 in F major: 'à immitazione de Corni da Caccia'
[8:53]
Concerto No.9 in G major [7:56]
Concerto No.10 in E flat major: 'Da Camera' [15:19]
Concerto No. 11 in C minor: 'à 5. da Chiesa' [9:44]
Concerto No.12 in f major [10:43]
The
Raglan Baroque Players/Elizabeth Wallfisch (violin, director) (Alison
Bury, Rachel Isserlis, Catherine Weiss, Catherine Mackintosh (solo
violin, violin); Asusan Carpenter-Jacobs, William thorpe (violin);
Annette Isserlis, Rosemary Nalden (viola); Richard Tunnicliffe, Timothy
Kramer (cello); Chi-Chi Nwankoku (double bass); Kasia Elsner (lute);
Alastair Ross, Nicholas Kramer (harpsichord))
rec. 21-23 May, 11, 13 June 1996
HYPERION DYAD CDD22064 [34:36 + 64:01] |
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Locatelli's career followed a relatively unusual trajectory.
Born in Bergamo, he went to Rome at the age of sixteen where
he studied with Valentini - and, somewhat less probably, with
the ailing and soon-to-be-deceased Corelli. From 1723 onwards
he began to make his peripatetic career, primarily as a violin
virtuoso, becoming virtuoso da camera in Mantua in 1725
before attracting admiring attention, as he moved on from place
to place, in Venice, Munich, Dresden, Berlin and Kassel inter
alia. Then in 1729 he settled in Amsterdam, remaining there
until his death in 1764.
Perhaps he was simply weary of travelling and of the pressures
on the virtuoso performer who had to live up to his reputation
- or make a new one - in each fresh city or court. Whatever
his reasons, in Amsterdam he settled into a way of living in
which activities such as teaching and composing, working in
music publishing and revising his own works, seem to have taken
precedence over performance. His Opus 4 set was published, in
Amsterdam in 1735, by the French Hugeunot Michel-Charles Le
Cène (c.1684-1743), a publisher for whom Locatelli, in
his Amsterdam years, sometimes worked as a proof-reader.
Locatelli's Opus 4 is a somewhat schizophrenic collection,
made up of six so-called 'Introduttioni Teatrali' and
six 'Concerti'. The status of the Introduttioni Teatrali
is hard to determine. Structurally, with their sequence of fast
- slower- fast - movements, they belong in the tradition of
the Neapolitan overture. But whether or not they were written
for actual theatrical use - if so, when and where? - is not
known; perhaps their title is meant to indicate no more than
style and atmosphere rather than specific use - an early version
of the 'concert overture' as it were. Elizabeth Wallfisch
and the Raglan Baroque Players play them with fair verve and
vibrancy; a number of the slow central movements are particularly
fine and affecting. A little more sense of theatricality in
the outer movements - especially in the attention-grabbing first
movements wouldn't perhaps have gone amiss. This is music
well-suited to the more overtly theatrical and spotlit methods
of, say, Rinaldo Alessandrini or Andrea Marcon.
Is there an intended relationship between the six concertos
which complete Locatelli's opus 4 and the Introduttioni
which precede them? Are the two groups meant to complement one
another stylistically? To comment on one another somehow To
suggest alternative musical possibilities? Or is opus 4 merely
to be viewed as a miscellany? Superficially the concertos look
relatively conventional in structure, but closer inspection
reveals a good deal that is odd and individual. The music is
constantly inventive and often rather surprising - listen, for
example, to the horn imitations in the eighth concerto or the
remarkable minuet and variations which closes the tenth concerto.
The playing here is excellent and perceptive, the interplay
of soloist(s) and ensemble beautifully judged.
Glyn Pursglove
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