15 Minute Italian

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To commemorate the bicentenary of the death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (December 5, 1791) Philips Classics Records assembled The Complete Mozart Edition comprising 180 compact discs arranged into 45 themed volumes. Each volume in the series is accompanied by a deluxe booklet with detailed information about the works, with many illustrations.

The epitome of a Renaissance man, Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739) won success and acclaim as a poet, writer, musician, lawyer, judge, administrator and philologist. Though his keyboard sonatas have appeared on several recorded collections of the Italian Baroque, they have rarely been presented in a comprehensive manner. In doing so, this album celebrates the personal even idiosyncratic style of a composer whose technical accomplishment facilitates rather than stifling his creative voice. The 12 Sonatas were later published as Op.3. They date from early in Marcellos career, and are mostly cast in three and four brief movements, though the first and last of them, in D minor and C minor respectively, feature more extended forms.

The appearance on disc of Antoine Dauvergne's opera-bouffon of 1753, Les Troqueurs is at once a happy occasion and a frustrating one. For while we can rejoice at the chance to make the acquaintance of this charming little intermede, it also serves to remind us that there are an awful lot of French comic operas from the second half of the eighteenth century that remain unheard. This is repertory that is both interesting and important to the history of opera in general, and Les Troqueurs is the work that stands at its head, for following as it did on the heels of the influential Paris performances of Pergolesi's La serva padrona it was the first real attempt at a wholly French comic opera in the same modern, dramatically light-footed mould.