Two English comments from the 1770s throw interesting light on
Albinoni’s
reputation in the years after his death. Sir Charles Burney, in his
General
History of Music (1776-89) writes of “Tomaso Albinoni, a composer well
known in England about forty or fifty years ago, by some light and easy concertos
for violins, but better known at Venice by thirty-three dramas which he set to
music”; Sir John Hawkins, writing in his
General History of the Science
and Practice of Music (1776) tells us that Albinoni’s works “were
sundry times printed, and at length become so familiar in England, that many
of the common fiddlers [sic] were able to play them”. Both bear witness
to the familiarity of Albinoni’s instrumental music; both perhaps contain
implications that it was perhaps over-familiar and was by then decidedly dated;
both view it as offering fewer challenges to the player than the music of some
of his contemporaries - Burney calls Albinoni’s music “light and
easy” and Hawkins (with a hint of snobbery) declares “that many of
the common fiddlers” were able to play it.
Certainly Albinoni’s concertos didn’t require virtuoso instrumentalists
and were much explored by amateur musicians of a high standard. The Op. 10 concertos
formed the last of Albinoni’s series of published collections of
sinfonias and
concerti
a cinque. They have qualities of elegance and clarity, the work of an experienced
and sophisticated composer who doesn’t appear to be attempting anything
startlingly new, but who has established a musical mode in which he is entirely
comfortable and which he can gently expand and extend as occasion dictates. There
is often a sense of real chamber music collegiality in these concertos, in which
the soloists are not excessively foregrounded and in which their roles are often
as much decorative as expressive. For all that, Albinoni has a real capacity
for the invention of attractive melodies - as, for example, in the central slow
movement of Concerto No. 5 - and much of his writing in these concertos has an
attractive calmness and poise.
As my earlier quotation from Burney reminds us, Albinoni had a substantial and
lasting fame in Italy as an operatic composer. We know the titles of over fifty
of his operas, but by far the greater part of this output is now lost. But it
isn’t, I think, fanciful to hear in these concertos echoes of a man of
great theatrical experience. In Concerto No. 7, for example, there is much in
the phrasing that reminds one of contemporary operatic idiom.
Albinoni often seems a composer relatively uninfluenced by many of his contemporaries,
a man who established his own ‘language’ quite early and then went
on refining it. While that may largely be true, this final set of concertos suggests
that he was able to listen and learn too. As Claudio Toscani suggests in his
excellent booklet notes, there are more than a few “typically
gallant inflections” and,
in Concerto No. 11 there are musical reminders that the whole collection is dedicated
to Don Luca Fernando Patiño, Marquis of Castelan, as Albinoni alludes
to the music of the guitar and even to flamenco-like rhythms.
Throughout Harmonices Mundi, directed by Claudio Astronio, play with idiomatic
vivacity, while respecting the elegant poise of so much of the music. The recorded
sound is excellent, and the disc puts a very eloquent case for Albinoni’s
final collection of concertos.
Glyn Pursglove
see also review by Dominy
Clements
Harmonices Mundi/Claudio Astronio 
[72:12] 
