Andrea Sadia Sunday Stroll

In the eighteenth century, the sonata model established by the published works of Arcangelo Corelli conquered all of musical Europe. Throughout the century, transcriptions of his music were published for every instrument, and the viola da gamba was no exception. The most interesting collection is that held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris (MS Vm7 6308), which presents the twelve sonatas of Corelli’s op.5 in transcription for viola da gamba. Although it is preserved in Paris, certain stylistic elements suggest that this transcription originated in the German-speaking region of Europe, with particular reference to composers such as Johannes Schenck, Konrad Höffler or Gottfried Finger, whose works were deeply influenced by Corelli’s style. It is to this repertory that Teodoro Bau, winner of the 2021 Ma Festival Bruges competition, devotes his recording.

The Italian newspaper La Repubblica calls him almost the “most talented Bach pianist” in Italy, and Andrea Bacchetti has given concerts internationally on the world’s largest classical music stages. When Bacchetti talks about Bach, he calls his music “his life, his day and his night”. Hardly any other pianist manages to read Bach’s music in such a modern and precise way as the interpreter from Genoa does. On his latest release, he has now devoted himself to the second part of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Piano Book, one of the key works of the Baroque era, on whose music Bacchetti has specialized for years.

Andrea Zani (1696-1757) was active in his native northern Italy but his career included an extended period in Vienna in the 1730s, where he enjoyed the patronage of Count von Schönborn. These 12 cello concertos survive in manuscript parts in the Schönborn archive and have been rediscovered by Zani’s biographer, the New Zealand musicologist Jill Ward. They make a notable addition to the 18th-century cello repertoire; the idiom is quite Vivaldian but tending towards the decorative elegance characteristic of the middle of the 1700s and demonstrating a distinctive, pleasing melodic quality.