Evaristo Felice dall’ABACO (1675-1742)
Concerto in B minor, Op.2, No.8 (1712)*
Concerto in G minor, Op.2, No.5 (1712)****
Concerto a quattro da chiesa in D major, Op.2, No.6 (1712)***
Concerto in B flat, Op.2, No.9 (1712)*
Concerto in F, Op.6, No.3 (1735)*
Concerto a quattro da chiesa, Op.2, No.10 (1712)***
Concerto in E, Op.6, No.2 (1735)****
Concerto in F, Op.6, No.6 (1735)**
Cappella Coloniensis/Günter Wich*, György Fischer**, Hanns-Martin
Schneidt***, Wilfried Boettcher****
rec. 27 April 1969, 17 April 1972, 21 February 1975, 2 April 1975, 8 August
1977, 9 August 1978, Oetkerhalle, Bielefeld
PHOENIX EDITION 190 [65:41]
In that huge diaspora of Italian musicians which characterises so much in the
history of Baroque music, whereby instrumentalists and composers spread across
the courts and cities of transalpine Europe, Evaristo dall’Abaco is a
relatively unusual case. For the most part the Italian musicians who relocated
to Spain or Sweden, London or Vienna, were primarily agents in the spreading
of Italian styles and musical aesthetics. In the case of dall’Abaco we
have, however, a musician who strikingly absorbed the non-Italian models he
encountered and accommodated himself to tastes that were not merely Italianate.
Evaristo dall’Abaco was born in Verona - he died in Munich - he was born
on 12 July 1675 and died on 12 July sixty five years later. His father was
a prominent jurist, but also a player of the guitar and encouraged the son’s
musical abilities and he studied both violin and cello. By 1696 he was working
in Modena. In the light of dall’Abaco’s later development it is
interesting to note that the conductor (Monsieur Ambreville) of the court orchestra
in Modena was French. The next record of dall’Abaco seems to be in 1704,
when he was working as a cellist at the Bavarian court. Military defeats in
the War of the Spanish Succession forced dall’Abaco’s employer,
Maximilian II of Emmanuel, elector of Bavaria, into exile in Brussels and later
in Mons, before his eventual return to Munich in 1715. Accompanying his employer,
dall’Abaco was exposed to the music of France, music that Maximilian
clearly found very much to his taste. Gradually dall’Abaco’s own
compositions showed increasing signs of French influence.
For all its responsiveness to French examples - responding both to his employer’s
tastes and to all the music he heard during his years in the Netherlands and
France - dall’Abaco’s music was also firmly grounded in the tradition
established by Corelli, although always handled with a certain independence
of mind. Increasingly his concertos included French dance movements and characteristic
qualities that Benjamin Ivry’s too brief booklet notes well describe
as “light, fleet, self-contained, and discreet”. Increasingly (as,
for example, in the concertos published in 1735) a manner one might sensibly
describe as galant becomes noticeable. The results are intriguingly individual
and should appeal to anyone who enjoys the tradition of the baroque concerto.
These were originally broadcasts by Westdeutschen Rundfunks Köln, with
Cappella Coloniensis playing under various conductors. He recorded sound is
occasionally lacking in the highest degree of clarity but is generally satisfactory.
The playing of the Cappella Coloniensis is idiomatic, though their reading
of some of the slower movements will seem rather on the lush side to ears attuned
to some contemporary baroque ensembles.
Glyn Pursglove